Neo-Latin Texts from Bloomsbury

The British publisher Bloomsbury has published at least 3 volumes of Neo-Latin literature: 1 volume each of European and British texts, and 1 of texts in British Universities. 1 more volume, dealing with Latin plays written by Jesuits in Japan, may have already appeared. However, I have had only the first 3 volumes before my eyes, and so this post will concentrate mostly on those. Bloomsbury's website shows 6 further volumes scheduled for publication later in 2023 and 2024, with texts by Ermolao Barbaro, Roger Ascham, Robert Persons, SJ, Classical scholars, and Popes Urban VIII, Alexander VII and Leo XIII. Here is the page on this Neo-Latin series on Bloomsbury's website. 

The first 3 volumes in this series, An Anthology of European Neo-Latin Literature, An Anthology of British Neo-Latin Literature and An Anthology of Neo-Latin Literature in British Universities, present a selection of excerpts of items published between AD 1500 and 1800 in the first two volumes, and between AD 1500 and 1700 in the volume concerning British universities. 

 

Each Neo-Latin text -- 19 of them in the volume on European Latin, 18 in the volume on British Latin and 11 in the volume concerning Latin in British universities -- is preceded by an introduction and followed by a commentary, and furnished with a facing-page English translation, each text's apparatus provided by a different luminary from today's world of academic Latin and related fields. The introductions provide information about the authors and situations in which the texts were written, the commentaries help to explain passages which might otherwise be mysterious. They are simply splendid, with much useful information for both the layperson and the specialist. I'm sorry, but I have nothing to carp about here.

The selection of authors in the volumes on European and British Neo-Latin will cause no great surprise to those already familiar with the field: Erasmus, More, Elizabeth I, Buchanan, Milton, Barclay and the other stars of the period are all there. There is Bembo on Columbus' first voyage, Fracastoro on syphilis, an excerpt from John Barclay's novel Argenis -- the usual suspects.

The volume on Latin in British Universities stays true to its title, offering treatises on the correct teaching of Greek, on various power struggles between universities and politicians as well as panegyrics on statesmen with whom the universities happened to have more harmonious relations, and some student compositions which are more art for art's sake.

Correcting History

Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor, and Philip II, King of Spain, cousins in the Habsburg family, were educated together as children in Spain. Same tutors, same library. When they grew up, Rudolph II was extremely tolerant religiously. He said, "I am not a Catholic or a Lutheran, I am a Christian." But Muslims and Jews were also welcome in his court, if they had talent and/or brains. 

Philip, on the other hand, is thought of, at least in the English-speaking world, as representing the most intolerant form of Catholicism. Elizabeth and the English defeated the Spanish Armada, striking a huge  blow for freedom.

 

That's the way we hear about it in English-speaking parts of the world. 

We learn that the only time in his life Philip smiled was when heard of the St Batholomew's Day Massacre in France, when 70,000 Protestants were killed in France, and most of the rest fled the country.

Except that it was probably less than 5,000. Many Protestants had to flee France. But by no means all of them. Still very bad, but not what we learn. And the part about Philip smiling for the only time in his life when he heard about it -- I'm thinking that might be bullshit too. I'm thinking it's entirely possible that he felt very BAD about a huge massacre, even if it was a huge massacre of Protestants. 

And the part about the defeat of the Spanish Armada being a great victory for freedom -- Catholics didn't get civil rights in England for another 200 years. And they didn't get FULL civil rights until even later than that. Spain, horrible repression, vs England, glorious freedom -- that's just one example of the huge whoppers we are taught about the Tudor dynasty and the world around it.

Just the same way that George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree or threw a silver dollar across the Potomac. We know now that Parson Weems made that up, and a lot of other things which were considered true for a very long time.

History is imperfect. We keep working on improving its accuracy and insight.

The Persistence of Latin

Sometimes referred to as Neo-Latin. I'm going to list just a few examples.

For the most part, new volumes of Classical Latin and Greek texts from Oxfordand Teubnerare still appearing with prefaces in Latin. The few recent exceptions with prefaces and/or appendices in vernacular languages disturb me not a little.

Apart from Classical Studies, the only current communication in Latin of which I know is a Finnish website which still presents the news in Latin.

I own several volumes of volumes written by Catholic clergy in Latin in the 20th century, before the 2nd Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965, some consisting of theology, others of general news and notes from this or that order.

They say that the use of Latin persisted longer in the fields of mathematics and botany than elsewhere. For now I'm taking their word for it about botany. When it comes to math, as late as when Thomas Paine was blithely calling for ancient languages to be discarded, one of the leading mathematicians of the time, Leonhard Euler,was writing and publishing in Latin, as were, I presume, many of his contemporary mathematicians, and many more for quite a while after.

A little earlier, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Isaac Newton published his Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica in Latin; and Newton's rival -- or his punching-bag, depending upon how one views the matter -- Leibniz, although born and raised in Germany, was writing and publishing almost exclusively in Latin and French. As a young man Leibniz briefly met and corresponded with Spinoza, who wrote a few things in Dutch, but whose fame rests for the most part upon his Latin works, which today, for whatever reason, seem to be extraordinarily hard to find in untranslated book form. (Beaucoup translations of Spinoza's works. What th Heck are the translators translating from? as a character in William Gaddis' JR asked who was, it's not such a stretch to presume, representing Gaddis wondering in the face of the volume of fan mail he got about The Recognitions, are they all passing one copy around?)

Milton and Hobbes wrote quite a bit in Latin as well as in English. Milton's Latin poems -- and his Greek ones! Boy howdy! -- can be had in some anthologies;his Latin prose, although available translated everywhere you look, just like Spinoza's stuff, seem to be even rarer untranslated. (Or -- a possibility which my readers should assumed is implied. Always -- I'm just clueless.)

It would seem that a working knowledge of Latin was still assumed in some circles in the 17th century, not just in math and other sciences and philosophy, but among politicians and readers of history as well. In his collection of eywitness and near-contemporary accounts of the battle of White Mountain in 1620,Anton Gindely includes among his 44 sources 12 written in Latin. (Along with 20 in German, 3 in French, 4 in Spanish, 3 in Czech and 1 in English, which adds up to 43 and means, you're right, I counted wrong. But you get the idea.)

Some collections of letters give me the impression that Elizabeth I and Henry VIII of England wrote much more and much better in Latin, and possibly in French as well, than in English. (Which would mean that that scene in A Man For All Seasons where Henry meets Thomas More's daughter and the subject of Latin comes up, and she starts chattering away in the language and Henry can only haltingly respond with a few words, and he gets embarassed and angry, is historicaly waaaay off. Unless someone ghost-wrote all those letters of Henry's, but you know what? I doubt that!)

How far back into the past, into the history of western Europe, does one have to go to reach the point where Latin was more prevelant as a written language than the venacular? It really depends upon which group one considers, which profession or specialty, which social class, too. Latin seems always to have been more prevalent the higher one climbed on the social ladder. Perhaps the higher classes consciously used it as a means of separating themselves from the masses or of making the separation greater. Thomas Paine reacted by rejecting the language. I take just the opposite tack, I say it's just one more reason for us unwashed masses to learn it, one more way to seize what was denied our kind.