Aurispa, Petrarch, and Lucian: An Aspect of Renaissance Translation

1974 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cast
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
The Dead

‘A great age of literature’ remarked Ezra Pound in Make it New 'is perhaps always a great age of translation.’ In this article we will be examining a Latin translation of the twelfth Dialogue of the Dead of Lucian by the Italian humanist Giovanni Aurispa, and the influence that this translation, known generally as the Comparatio, had in Italy and in other countries of Europe, in France, in Germany, in England, in Spain, and in Bohemia. Such a translation was naturally important. Few educated people in Europe at the time we are concerned with, the fifteenth century, could, or would, read Greek. If they knew anything of a recently discovered writer like Lucian, it was precisely through Latin versions of his work produced by scholars like Aurispa.

Analecta Gelliana

1993 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 292-297
Author(s):  
Leofranc Holford-strevens
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
The Right

Not only was Gellius' preface received in the fifteenth century at the end of his work instead of the beginning, but it arrived almost or wholly without the Greek, which had to be patched up by guesswork; between siluarum and quidam early editors read ‘ille κηρ⋯ον, alius κ⋯ρας ⋯μαλӨε⋯ας’, the first two names in the similar passage, Plin. N.H. pr. 24. Salmasius, in the preface to his Plinianae exercitationes, printed a text ‘ex vestigiis antiquae scripturae optimi exemplaris [sc. MS P = Paris, BN lat. 5765] partim etiam coniecturis nostris correctiorem’; following κ⋯ρας he gave, in the right place but with the wrong accent, ‘alius Κ⋯ρια’. But when eleven years later he came to annotate Simplicius' commentary on Epictetus' Ἐγχειρ⋯διον, alerted by Simplicius' statement (taken from Arrian's own epistle dedicatory) συν⋯ταξεν ⋯ Ἀρριαν⋯ς, τ⋯ καιριὼτατα κα⋯ ⋯ναγκαι⋯τατα ⋯ν øιλοσοø⋯ᾳ κα⋯ κινητικώτατα τ⋯ν ψυχ⋯ν ⋯πιλεξ⋯μενος ⋯κ τ⋯ν Ἐπικτ⋯του λ⋯γων, he remarked: ‘Quidam et inscripsere libros suos olim τ⋯ κα⋯ρια, quod maxime ad rem quam tractabant pertinentia eo opere persequebantur’, citing Gellius with ‘alius κα⋯ρια and commenting ‘Ita enim ex veteri codice ibi scribendum est, non ut vulgo editur, κ⋯ριον [sic]'. Nevertheless, editors preferred his first thoughts to his second; Hertz, in his separate edition of Gellius' preface (Progr. Breslau, summer 1877) and in his editio maior (Berlin, 1883–5), gives three parallels:Plin. N.H. pr. 24, ‘Κηρ⋯ον inscripsere quod uolebant intellegi fauom’, where the Latin translation guarantees the reading;Clem. Alex. 6.1.2.1 (pp. 422–3 Stählin-Früchtel-Treu) ⋯ν μ⋯ν οὖν τῷ λειμ⋯νι τ⋯ ἄνӨη ποικ⋯λως ⋯νӨοȗντα κ⋯ν τ⋯ παραδε⋯σ⋯ [‘orchard’] ⋯ τ⋯ν ⋯κροδρ⋯ων øυτε⋯α οὐ κατ⋯ εἶδος ἕκαστον κεχώρισται τ⋯ν ⋯λλογεν⋯ν (ᾗ κα⋯ Λειμ⋯ν⋯ς τινες κα⋯ Ἑλικ⋯νας κα⋯ Κηρ⋯α κα⋯ Π⋯πλους συναγωγ⋯ς øιλομαӨεȋς ποικ⋯λως ⋯ξανӨισ⋯μενοι συνεγρ⋯ψαντο), where again the sense requires the honeycomb;Philost. VS 565 ⋯πιστολα⋯ δ⋯ πλεȋσται Ἡρώδου κα⋯ διαλ⋯ξει κα⋯ ⋯øημερ⋯δες ⋯γχειρ⋯δι⋯ τε κα⋯ καίρια τ⋯ν ⋯ρχα⋯αν πολυμ⋯Өειαν ⋯ν βραχεȋ ⋯πηνӨισμ⋯να, where hertz emends κα⋯ρια to κηρ⋯α.

Written in the Heart

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Individual

This chapter first explores how elements of fifteenth-century devotion were transformed in sixteenth-century Nuremberg. Using a genre of print culture, the illustrated song pamphlet, it argues that devotional culture provides methodological tools with which to engage with belief. One such pamphlet, containing a hymn originally written to accompany the preaching of the Joachimsthal minister Johannes Mathesius, then provides an avenue into the re-conception of belief in resurrection in Lutheran devotional culture. Mathesius’s writings about resurrection and the power of sight and sound reveal how faith in the raising of the dead was understood to be “written in the heart” of the individual. As Mathesius’s encounter with song in the midst of tragedy confirms, the formation of belief was thus understood to be contingent on personal experience. Yet as the spread of that song across Germany confirms, communal singing also forged an understanding of belief as a tie that bound.

The Aerial Battle in the Toledot Yeshu and Sodomy in the Late Middle Ages

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 493-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Mazo Karras
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Activity ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Sexual Intercourse ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Latin Version ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract Thomas Ebendorfer’s fifteenth-century Latin translation of a Hebrew Toledot Yeshu text is the earliest extant Latin version to include a full narrative from the birth of Jesus to the events following the crucifixion, and predates existing Hebrew versions. After reviewing the place of Ebendorfer’s work in the textual tradition of the Toledot, the article examines carefully the work’s account of the aerial battle between Jesus and Judas, in comparison to other versions. Ebendorfer includes the detail of sexual intercourse between the two, which is absent in many later versions. In the context of a discussion of Christian and Jewish attitudes toward male–male sexual activity in the Middle Ages, the article concludes that while this detail was in Ebendorfer’s exemplar, he could have elaborated on it in a way that indicates this was a particularly Christian concern.

scholarly journals Early Texts on Hindu-Arabic Calculation

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 13-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Menso Folkerts
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Decimal Place ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Place Value ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
The West ◽  
Value System

This article describes how the decimal place value system was transmitted from India via the Arabs to the West up to the end of the fifteenth century. The arithmetical work of al-Khwārizmī's, ca. 825, is the oldest Arabic work on Indian arithmetic of which we have detailed knowledge. There is no known Arabic manuscript of this work; our knowledge of it is based on an early reworking of a Latin translation. Until some years ago, only one fragmentary manuscript of this twelfth-century reworking was known (Cambridge, UL, Ii.6.5). Another manuscript that transmits the complete text (New York, Hispanic Society of America, HC 397/726) has made possible a more exact study of al-Khwārizmī's work. This article gives an outline of this manuscript's contents and discusses some characteristics of its presentation.

scholarly journals A Hadith Condemned at Paris: Reactions to the Power of Impression in the Latin Translation of al-Ghazālī’s Maqāṣid al-falāsifa

2017 ◽  
pp. 145
Author(s):  
Anthony MINNEMA
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Evil Eye ◽  
Agent Intellect

Of the more than two-hundred articles of the Parisian Condemnation of 1277, one contains an arresting reference to a camel that is killed by a magician by means of sight alone through the power of the Evil Eye. While it is difficult to identify the sources of many doctrines in the edict with certainty, this article can be matched positively to a discussion of the soul’s power of impression in the Latin translation of al-Ghazali’s Maqāṣid al-falāsifa. The concept of impression was condemned on account of its association with the Agent Intellect and the theory of emanation, but many philosophers preserved the illustrative example of the camel even when refuting the attendant argument. Unbeknownst to the Latin world, however, this statement about a camel does not originate with al-Ghazali, but with the Prophet Muhammad. This study traces the origin of the article in the Condemnation of 1277 back through Arabic and Persian worlds and examines its reception in the Latin intellectual tradition from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. It also demonstrates that, despite condemnation’s influence and notoriety, its interpretation of this passage in al-Ghazali was not the dominant one in the Latin intellectual tradition. The majority of scholars instead interpreted this passage as al-Ghazali originally intended as an expression of speculative metaphysics, not magic.

scholarly journals THE VAMPIRLIJA HILL IN THE VILLAGE OF MIJAJLOVAC (TRSTENIK): A POSSIBLE LOCATION FOR THE BIRTHPLACE OF EUROPEAN ‘VAMPIROLOGY’

2021 ◽  
pp. 116-132
Author(s):  
ALEKSANDAR RISTIĆ
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Bram Stoker ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Morava River ◽  
The Village

Vampires gained worldwide popularity due to the classic novel about the most famous one, Dracula, written by Bram Stoker in 1897. Bram Stoker’s Dracula has very little in common with his inspiration, the fifteenth-century Wallachian ruler Vlad III (1431‒1476), who was a real historical figure. However, some strange events involving the dead seem to have occurred in Southwest of Transylvania a few centuries after the Wallachian prince’s death. In some parts of the Habsburg Kingdom of Serbia (1718‒1739), the local Austrian authorities recorded some cases of ‘vampirism’, which Europe would be introduced to shortly afterward, along with this newly accepted word. This paper will present historical facts about one particular case recorded at the southernmost border of the Habsburg Empire, which at the time was the West Morava River. It was the case of a ‘vampire’ named Arnold Paole, who died in 1726/7 in the border village of Medveđa and whose case ‘infected’ the whole Europe with the ‘virus’ of ‘vampiromania’. The main goal of the paper is to locate the spot where one of the first ‘vampire slayings’ ever recorded could have taken place, and to direct further investigations within early modern age archaeology.

scholarly journals The art of death and childbirth in Renaissance Italy

2011 ◽  
pp. 93-98
Author(s):  
Elaine Hoysted
Keyword(s):  
Pregnant Women ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Post Partum ◽  
Vast Array ◽  
Mother And Child ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Renaissance Italy

Pregnancy was a dangerous event in the life of a fifteenth-century Florentine patrician woman. One-fifth of all deaths among females that occurred in Florence during this period were in fact related to complications in childbirth or ensuing post-partum infections. In the years 1424-25 and 1430, the Books of the Dead recorded the deaths of fifty-two women as a result of labour. As conditions for pregnant women did not improve in the ensuing half a century, childbirth remained a dangerous event for women to endure. Husbands took many precautions to ensure a successful birth as can be seen in the vast array of objects associated with this event created at this time. People turned to religion and magic in order to ensure that both the mother and child would survive this perilous process. Death in childbirth affected women from all classes and wealth did not act as a deterrent. The loss ...

Lament for the Dead in Fifteenth-Century Scotland

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Marsland
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Romance Narratives

This chapter explores the importance of lament for the dead within historical and romance narratives composed in Scotland between c.1438 and c.1500 in both Older Scots and Latin. The chapter looks in detail at intercalated laments for the dead included in Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon (c.1440–7) and the anonymous Liber Pluscardensis (completed c.1461) as well as in the octosyllabic Buik of Alexander (c.1437), The Wallace (c.1476–8), and Sir Gilbert Hay’s Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour (c.1460–99). The chapter traces a persistent association within these texts between lament for the dead and physical rites of commemoration such as burial and the production of monuments, arguing that lament for the dead provides a means by which reputations can be authoritatively fixed.

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