Related Papers
Jan Papy (ed.), The Leuven Collegium Trilingue 1517-1797: Erasmus, humanist educational practice and the new language institute Latin - Greek - Hebrew. Leuven, Paris & Bristol, CT: Peeters, pp. 129-153
Studying Ancient Greek at the Old University of Leuven: an outline in a European context
2018 •
Raf Van Rooy
In Rutger Rescius’ classroom at the Leuven Collegium Trilingue (1543–44): His study program and didactic method
Raf Van Rooy
In 1517, the Collegium Trilingue was established in Leuven. Founded under the will of Hieronymus Busleyden, this institute embodied Desiderius Erasmus’ humanist program of studying ancient texts, including the Bible, in their source languages. From its beginnings, the college greatly contributed to the progress of learning in Western Europe, especially during the sixteenth century. Many renowned scholars, including Gerardus Mercator and Carolus Clusius, studied at the Trilingue. Despite the undeniable impact of this institute, little is known about its actual teaching practices. This is partly due to the scarcity of source material, but at least as much to the negligence of present-day scholars. The present paper aims to partly remedy this research lacuna by reconstructing the study program and didactic method of Rutger Rescius (c. 1495–1545), the first professor of Greek at the Collegium Trilingue. It principally aims to do so by zooming in on a unique document, thus far largely overlooked: the notes taken by a student of the Trilingue, a certain Johannes Aegidius, from October 1543 onwards. They are written down in a copy of the 1535 edition of Homer’s Odyssey and related works, printed by Rescius himself in cooperation with Bartholomaeus Gravius (d. 1578). The copy is now preserved at Ghent University Library. The following questions will take center stage in analyzing this document: (1) What was the didactic method of Rescius, at that time very experienced as a teacher of Greek? (2) How representative is it for Rescius’ entire career and for the methods of other professors of Greek at the Trilingue? (3) How does it relate to early modern teaching methods of ancient languages in general? I will also discuss what kinds of texts Rescius read with his students apart from Homer. [To appear in the proceedings of the 2017 LECTIO conference at KU Leuven]
Βάρβαρος οὐ πέλομαι ... "I'm not a barbarian....". The humanists in and about the Greek language. An exhibition dedicated to the reflections of the love for ancient Hellas in old prints from Tartu University Library: Catalogue. Tartu 2014: Tartu University Library.
Eve Valper, Janika Päll
The catalogue is published online, under: http://hdl.handle.net/10062/47903
Hellenostephanos. Humanist Greek in Early Modern Europe: Learned Communities between Antiquity and Contemporary Culture
2018 •
Ivo Volt, Janika Päll
The rebirth of Ancient Greek in Europe was promoted by Humanist education and ideas to such an extent that we can consider the Greek language as a formative element of Humanist culture. Next to Latin, the default common language, a Humanist has to know and use Greek, because he is not, cannot and will not be a barbarian: βάρβαρος οὐ πέλομαι, as Julius Caesar Scaliger claimed in his verses in 1600. Wreaths (στέφανοι) have been the symbols of the cult of Muses from ancient times. After the love for Greek Muses had been revived by Renaissance Humanist poets and scholars, it has remained with us both in poetic activity and in scholarship. The Hellenostephanos volume presents a collection of papers by scholars who study Humanist Greek, aspiring towards another revival of Hellenism, and trying to avoid being barbarians. The volume includes papers by Christian Gastgeber, Gita Bērziņa, Janika Päll, Charalampos Minaoglou, Erkki Sironen, Kaspar Kolk, Tua Korhonen, Johanna Akujärvi, Bartosz Awianowicz, Jean-Marie Flamand, Walther Ludwig, Alessandra Lukinovich, Martin Steinrück, Tomas Veteikis, Grigory Vorobyev, Vlado Rezar, Pieta van Beek, and Antoine Haaker.
CAUCE. Revista internacional de Filología, Comunicación y sus Didácticas
Methods and masters: Multilingual teaching in 16th-century Louvain
2017 •
Raf Van Rooy
Resumen: En el siglo XVI se practicaban varias lenguas en Flandes, especialmente en la ciudad universitaria de Lovaina y en Am-beres, centro económico de los Países Bajos españoles. El multilingüismo que se practicaba era por un lado un multilingüismo 'verti-cal', implicando el estudio de las tres lenguas 'sagradas' (hebreo, griego, latín); este tipo de estudio se concretizó con la fundación del Collegium Trilingue de Lovaina (1517). Por otro lado, estaba muy difundido un multilingüismo 'horizontal', que implicaba las lenguas vernáculas, como el español, el francés y el italiano; este tipo de multilingüismo se explica por el ascenso de la clase comerciante. La presente contribución analiza la documentación disponible (sobre los maestros de lengua y los instrumentos didácticos) y rastrea los fac-tores contextuales que influían en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras en Flandes, con particular atención a Lovaina. Palabras clave: Historia de la enseñanza de lenguas: Instrumentos didácticos; Multilingüismo (español, francés, italiano); Flandes; Collegi-um Trilingue de Lovaina; siglo XVI Abstract: In 16th-century Flanders, various languages were practiced, especially in the university town of Louvain and the city of Antwerp, the economic heart of the Southern Low Countries. On the one hand, the multilingualism to be observed there was a 'vertical' one: it concerned the study of the three 'sacred' languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Latin), and is typically exemplified by the creation of the Collegium Trilingue in Louvain (1517). On the other hand, there was a widespread 'horizontal' multilingualism, involving the vernaculars (e.g., French, Italian, Span-ish) and serving the needs of the ascending merchant class. The present paper surveys the extant documentation (language masters, didactic tools), and investigates the contextual factors underlying the teaching and learning of foreign languages in Flanders, with a focus on Louvain.
Receptions of Hellenism in Early Modern Europe: 15th-17th Centuries
A Professor at Work: Hadrianus Amerotius (c.1495–1560) and the Study of Greek in Sixteenth-Century Louvain
2019 •
Raf Van Rooy
The Hellenizing Muse
(with András Németh) Hungary, in: The Hellenizing Muse, ed. Filippomaria Pontani, Stefan Weise, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2021.
2021 •
Farkas Gabor Kiss
Greek studies were brought to Hungary around the middle of the 15th century. Janus Pannonius (1434-1472) had already studied Greek under the guidance of Guarino Veronese in the 1440s in Ferrara ( Italy), where translating Greek poems into Latin, and Latin poems into Greek was part of the curriculum (as witnessed by Battista Guarini's De ordine docendi et studendi). Janus celebrated Guarino as the guiding light of Greek studies in the West ('who gave back the land of Inachus to Latiumʼ, Latio reddidit Inachiam) and stressed the importance of studying Greek above all in his panegyric on his master (Panegyricus in Guarinum, ll. 725-732), because Greek is the language of intellectual life and poetry, blessed by the Muse (Graiis ingenium, Graiis dedit ore rotundo / Musa loqui, ll. 108-109). Still, none of Janus' Greek school exercises is known today. In Guarino's school in Ferrara, he became an excellent interpreter of Greek texts, and he also paraphrased many of the epigrams of the Anthologia Graeca in Latin verses. But it was then in Hungary that he translated a part of the sixth book of the Iliad into Latin verses and some works of Plutarch into Latin prose, in order to refresh his knowledge of Greek. No Greek poem by Pannonius is extant, nor by any other of the 15th century Hungarians who are known to have studied Greek in Italy (e.g., Péter Garázda in the 1460s, or Paulus Bánffy, who studied under Zaccaria Calliergi in Padua in 1502, or Johannes Vyrthesi/Vértesi, a pupil of Markos Mousouros in 1514) ( Italy, Greece). The Hellenizing Muse made its first appearance in Hungary in the 16th century under Erasmian influence ( Low Countries). Jacobus Piso, the most significant Latin poet in Hungary in the first decades of the 16th century, praised his Dutch friend for his Greek knowledge in 1509 (Graecae et Latinae literae, quibus ad invidiam usque excellis). 1 And it was Nicolaus Olahus/Oláh (1493-1568), an admirer and later also friend of Erasmus, who composed the first two poems in Greek, while serving as a secretary of Mary of Hungary in the Netherlands in the 1530s. His two Greek funerary poems (one on Erasmus, the other on Klára Újlaki, an aristocratic noble lady, and mother of Oláh's friend, Ferenc Újlaki) reflect the occasional character of most Greek poems of this time. Oláh's secretary Nicolaus Istvánffy (1539-1615) continued this Erasmian tradition with a Greek translation inserted in his juvenile collection of poems.
Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance. Travaux et Documents
A first stumbling step toward Ancient Greek dialectology in Western Europe. An edition and brief discussion of Johann Reuchlin’s De quattuor Graecae linguae differentiis libellus (1477/1478)
2014 •
Raf Van Rooy
It is widely known that the Ancient Greek language was dialectally utmost fragmented, to which both the existence of canonical-literary dialects and inscriptional evidence testify. This plurality of dialects has also been variously approached and interpreted by Early Modern scholars, who focused on the literary varieties. The first Western European attempt at a discussion of the main Ancient Greek speech varieties is to be ascribed to the Pforzheimer Humanist Johann(es) Reuchlin (Greco-Latinized also Ioannes Capnion; 22 February 1455–1522). However, his De quattuor Graecae linguae differentiis libellus (from here on referred to as Libellus) turned out to be no more than a Latin rendering of a Byzantine Greek treatise of questionable quality, even though he made every effort to make his opusculum look like a compilation rather than a mere translation of his (probably lost) manuscript model. A closer look at the work will not only allow to clarify its historical context and its genesis (section 1.), but also to point out some terminological tendencies in Humanist discourse on ‘dialects’ (2.3.). In addition, some elements of Förstel’s (1999) discussion of the work need to be relativized (2.3.). Sections 2.1.-2.2. offer a new edition of the dedicatory letter and of the Libellus, which takes into account an earlier and not yet investigated manuscript.
Anthony Grafton, “Renaissance Readers of Homer’s Ancient Readers,” in Robert Lamberton and John J. Keaney, eds., Homer’s Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 149–172
Anthony Grafton
Raf Van Rooy (ed.), Essays in the history of dialect studies: From ancient Greece to modern dialectology, Münster: Nodus
The riddle of the Greek language unraveled by a Renaissance Oedipus: Otto Walper and his manual on the Greek dialects (1589)
2020 •
Raf Van Rooy
