Absolutissimus is a Humanist treatise on Latin syntax, produced in early sixteenth-century England. The title page does not mention its author, and there has long existed confusion as to its authorship. This simple treatise, which became very popular in the sixteenth century under the name of Erasmus, was actually written by another Humanist scholar, William Lily, the first high master of St. Paul, and revised by Erasmus. The first edition (Pynson 1513 1 , London) was published anonymously, and Erasmus disowned this treatise in the preface to the second revised edition dated the 30th of July 1515 (Johann Froben, Basel 1515 2 ). Erasmus revised the 1513 edition by adding eighteen new examples, correcting minor errors, and clarifying his expressions (Cytowska 1973: 108). The 1515 edition contained John Colet’s letter to William Lily and Erasmus’s letter to his readers, in which Erasmus attributed the treatise to William Lily, saying that Lily had written it at John Colet’s request; the latter had then handed it over to Erasmus for emendation. This treatise was also known as De octo orationis partium constructione libellus, De constructione or simply Libellus.
William Lily (Lilius, Lilye ca 1468-1522) was an English Humanist scholar, born in Odiham, Hampshire. He studied at Magdalen College School in Oxford, where he was a pupil of John Stanbridge and John Anwykyll 3 . Having finished his studies at Oxford, Lily embarked on a journey which took him first to Jerusalem, then Rhodes (where he came into contact with Greek scholars), and finally to Rome and Venice. In Rome he attended lectures by two Italian Humanists, Sulpitius (fl. 1470-1490) and Pomponius Laetus (1425-1498), and met English Humanists, such as Thomas Linacre (ca. 1460-1524). When he returned to England in 1492, he settled in London, where he became friends with Thomas More. In 1511/12, John Colet (1467-1519), Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral and founder of St. Paul’s School (ca. 1509), appointed Lily as the school’s first High Master, which post he held until 1522. Lily co-authored with Colet an elementary Latin grammar, which was an important source for the so-called 'Lily's grammar', known also as 'King's grammar', compiled ca. 1540. The 'King's grammar' was a joint work of a royal committee appointed by Henry VIII, and its popularity continued well into the eighteenth century. Lily took part in the ‘grammarians’ war’, defending the imitation of good examples as opposed to grammatical rules as the road to good Latinity. Lily is generally credited with a pioneering role in teaching Greek in England. He died before the 9th of March, 1523.
Erasmus Desiderius of Rotterdam (ca. 1467-1536) (originally Geert Geertsz), a Dutch Humanist, is probably the most prominent scholar of Northern Humanism. After leaving school in Deventer, Erasmus entered the Augustinian monastery in Steyn in 1487; he studied theology in Paris (1495-1499) and was invited to England in 1499, where he met Thomas More and John Colet, who became his close friends. From England he returned to the Low Countries, but soon paid another visit to England (1505-1506) and yet another one (1509-1514) after his journey to Italy. In Italy he became friends with Aldus Manutius, the famous printer in Venice, and was promoted to Doctor of Theology in Turin. When back on the Continent, he became acquainted with the printer Johann Froben from Basel. The rest of his life he spent in Louvain (1517-1521), Freiburg and Basel; he died in Basel in 1536.
In addition to being a fine Latin stylist, and the author of Latin poems on both secular and religious themes, Erasmus was a prolific and influential writer in many genres. He was the author of five influential treatises on Humanist educational theory and a large number of popular textbooks taught in humanistic schools throughout Europe, especially north of the Alps. Today he is perhaps best known for his critical satires and for his work as editor of the first published edition of the Greek New Testament. His philological work included critical editions of the works of both classical and Patristic Greek and Latin authors as well as translations of Greek texts into Latin. Yet another literary genre that he actively pursued was letter-writing, and he published some of his correspondence with his contemporaries. In addition to the Libellus, his grammatical works included an epitome of the Elegantiae. of Valla and a treatise on the pronunciation of Greek and Latin.
The Libellus is an independent treatise on syntax, which discusses the construction of each part of speech in turn, as was customary in medieval and early modern grammars. Starting from the declinable parts, the treatise first deals with the construction of the verb, noun, and pronoun, followed by the indeclinable parts, the adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. 4 The participle is treated within the verb section, together with other derivatives of the verb: the gerunds, gerundives 5 , supines, participles, and verbal nouns. The noun and (especially) the verb receive the most detailed treatment.
The method of the Libellus is orderly, treating all the parts of speech in a similar fashion: it starts from a general rule, then listing various minor rules, and finally exceptions. Very few technical terms are used; the absence of the term ‘government’ (‚regimen‛) used in many contemporary treatises on syntax is striking, as is the rare occurrence of the terms ‘(in)transitive’. Transitivity was one of the key notions in Priscian’s syntactical analysis, which was incorporated into the works of many of Lily’s contemporaries, for example, John Anwykyll’s Compendium totius grammaticae. (Oxford, 1483) and Linacre’s Rudimenta grammatices. (ca 1522). The avoidance of theory is also manifest in that practically no definitions of syntactical concepts are provided. A significant tool of description in the Libellus is the order of the elements involved in a construction, which is a distinctly medieval trait. As in several other elementary accounts of syntax at the time, the notion of sentence is absent from the Libellus.
The Libellus starts by describing what medieval scholars and many of Erasmus’ contemporaries described as the subject-predicate relationship as follows: „The nominative of the agent or of the person receiving the action precedes the verb, being in the same number and person as the verb“ (f. a iii). Here congruence is at issue, but the technical term for this concept is absent; the verb ‚concordare‛ appears here and there. Having stated this general rule, he adds four minor rules and two exceptions. Word order plays an important part in the description: only the nominative case is construed before the verb, all the oblique cases being placed after the verb. The next general rule concerns the use of the genitive after the verb which involves various semantic relationships between the verb and its complement, such as possession, selling, accusing and so on. Similarly the construction of the dative is semantically based, involving acquisition, commandment, announcing, obedience, resisting, relation, and so forth; the complements of the verb in the ablative receive similar treatment, as signifying, for instance, instrument and manner.
In describing the relationship between the verb and its complements most medieval and many contemporary grammarians would say that the verb governs (‚regere‛) the nouns in the oblique cases, but this distinctly medieval term is absent from the Libellus, which shows a great deal of variation in its terminology. Erasmus employed the terms ‘to require’ or ‘to demand’ (‚exigere‛, ‚requirere‛), which had frequently been used by the late antique grammarian Priscian, but also many other terms, such as ‚admittere‛, ‚postulare‛, ‚gaudi‛, ‚asciscere‛, ‚addi‛, and ‚coadhaerere‛ (Chomartan 1981: 284). The terms transitive and intransitive both occur once; the term transitive is used in its standard sense to describe „the verbs demanding the accusative case, signifying the one undergoing the action“ (f. c ii), the intransitive when describing the reciprocal accusative (today known as ‘cognate objects’, such as ‘to live a life’): „Any intransitive verb takes the accusative of the noun signifying the same action [sc. as the verb], e.g. ‚Quam hic vitam vivitis‛?“ (f. c iii). Strikingly plain is the account of the ‘ablative absolute’, one of the most difficult Latin constructions, which runs as follows: „The ablative taken absolutely is added to any verb“ (f. c iii). The lesson is probably supposed to be drawn from the accompanying examples, such as ‚me dormiente tu bibis‛ (‘you are drinking while I sleep’). Indeed, the carefully chosen examples, avoiding elaborate quotations from the classics, play an important part in the method of the Libellus. 6 Similarly, in the discussion on ‚syllepsis‛, the pupil is supposed to infer the relevant constructions from the examples: „When several nominatives refer to the same verb, they are construed in the following manner: ‚Pater & praeceptor accersunt te, Ego & tu sumus in tuto, Tu & pater estis in periculo, Ego caeterique cognati periclitamur‛“ (f. a iii). The subtitle ‚syllepsis‛ is added to the margin in the 1515 edition.
The noun section first discusses the use of the genitive with the noun: „All nouns signifying possession, measure, number, or relation (‚relatio ad aliquid‛), demand the genitive“ (f. d iii). Here we - somewhat unexpectedly - come across a philosophical term, the relational noun, and a little later two more terms, ‚genus ‛and ‚species‛, which are described as follows: „Species is subjected to genus in the genitive or in the same case by apposition (‚per appositionem‛)“ (f. d iii). A leisurely definition of the ‚appositio‛ follows, and this is the only grammatical term defined in the treatise.
All syntactical study can ultimately be traced to the Institutiones grammaticae of the late antique grammarian Priscian, which was one of the favourite textbooks of the Humanists. The Institutiones had also been the standard textbook in medieval universities. Humanist scholars proclaimed that they wanted to study Priscian in its authentic form, deprived of Scholastic influence. The Libellus conformed to Humanist ideals in its keen avoidance of Scholastic philosophical concepts, and for Erasmus, as for Valla, language was a matter of usage rather than logic. It was no doubt a conscious choice to dismiss the terms ‘subject’ (‚suppositum‛) and ‘predicate’ (‚appositum‛) introduced into syntactical analysis by the medieval scholars; Erasmus laments their use in grammar teaching in his De pueris instituendis. 7 Yet many of Erasmus’ and Lily’s contemporaries did not hesitate to use them, and Erasmus used them in his Epitome Vallae. 8 Erasmus also avoided the technical and philosophical terms used by Priscian and seemed to prefer variety of expression to a consistent use of metalanguage.
In Antiquity, the study of syntax had been a highly theoretical subject, intimately associated with philosophy, and the canonical textbook in elementary grammar teaching, Donatus’s Ars minor. , did not deal with syntax. A section on syntax began to be integrated into pedagogical grammars in the Middle Ages, and independent treatises on syntax also began to be written, the most common being the anonymous treatises, entitled Regulae congruitatum. Erasmus does not mention the sources of the Libellus, but there is ground for supposing that they also included medieval treatises; the emphasis on word order in the Libellus is a distinctly medieval trait and the treatise bears traces of the medieval rules of concord. Erasmus was in all likelihood also influenced by the Italian Humanists, such as Valla, Perotti and Aldus Manutius, as well as by Nebrija (Chomarat 1981: 112-116; Margolin 1994). Medieval treatises made considerable use of philosophical concepts and definitions, which were alien to the educational theory of the early Humanists, who tended to dismiss abstract definitions as unsuitable for young pupils. The avoidance of definitions was in stark contrast to ancient pedagogy; for instance, the Ars minor leans heavily on the definitions of the parts of speech. A short comparison with other grammatical treatises composed at the time (e.g. John Anwykyll’s Compendium. and Linacre’s Progymnasmata. ) shows that the Libellus is exceptionally devoid of theory, thus aligning itself with Valla’s Elegantiae. and Melanchthon’s syntactical treatise ( Syntaxis Philippi Melanchthonis, first edition 1526). 9
The Libellus was designed to be used in the secondary stage of grammar teaching, and its plain method can be viewed as an attempt to present syntactical doctrine in a simplified form, so as to be better suited for the pedagogical needs of young pupils. However, unlike many elementary grammars, it does not use the catechetical method. In sum, the Libellus is one of the pioneering attempts to write an independent pedagogical treatise on syntax, dissociated from its original and medieval association with philosophy.
The Libellus was printed in both octavo and quarto till near the end of the sixteenth century. The 1513 edition was reprinted in 1514 and 1515 by Cornelius Zyrickzee (Cologne). The revised edition was published with corrections in 1517 (Io. Froben, Basel), and there are altogether 80 editions in the sixteenth century, of which ca. 55 editions appeared between 1517 and 1540. These editions no longer involved alterations to the text. The Libellus was published in the collected works of Erasmus by Froben in 1540 (Basel, Opera Omnia I, pp. 143-153) and edited by J. Clericus in the Opera Omnia (I, col. 165-180, 1703-1706). There are commented editions by H. Primaeus (Anvers, Mart. Cesaris 1536) and Iunius Rabirius (Anvers, Io. Graphaei 1538); the treatise was translated into Italian ( Enchridion della lingua latina nella volgare tradotto per M. Emilio di Emilii Bresciano, 1539, Venice) and into English (W. Ellis, A collection of English exercices. Transl. of Cicero … and adapted to the principal rules in the compendium of Erasmus syntax, 1782, London); glossed in English (Compendium Syntaxis Erasmianae with an English explication, London, J. Bonwicke, 1728). It was used with minor changes in Polish schools, with attribution to T. Billicanus (Cracovie 1537, 1538, 1539, 1543, 1549, 1564). Unlike the popular ‚Lily’s grammar‛, whose circulation was limited to England, the Libellus was widely used on the Continent. One of the reasons for the popularity of the treatise was probably its association with Erasmus. Another key to its success must have been its brevity, which John Colet associated - approvingly - with the maxim of the famous poet Horatius Flaccus: „libellum … pusillum quidem (…). Scis in praeceptis breuitatem placere Flacco, cuius sententiam et ipse uehementer approbo“. He probably had the following popular maxim in mind: „Whatever precepts you give, be short“, associated with Horace. There is a modern edition by Maria Cytowska (1973), together with an introduction and critical apparatus indicating the variants in the editions as well as the origin of examples.
1 Reprinted in Cologne, Cornelius Zyrickzee, in 1514 and 1515 and in Leipzig (Melchior Lotther 1515). Reprinted in Cologne, Cornelius Zyrickzee, in 1514 and 1515 and in Leipzig (Melchior Lotther 1515).
2 Reprinted Froben 1517.
3 John Stanbridge became the Informator or Schoolmaster of Magdalen College School, Oxford, in 1488, succeeding John Anwykyll, the author of Compendium totius grammaticae. (Oxford, 1483). Stanbridge, the author of several grammatical works, became famous for his methods of grammar teaching. John Colet also studied in Oxford, but it is doubtful whether he was a member of the college.
4 This order is neither that of Donatus nor that of Priscian. In early modern grammars, it was customary to discuss first the declinable parts (starting from the noun) and then the indeclinable parts, but many syntactical treatises also start from the construction of the verb.
5 Erasmus distinguished gerundives from gerunds, adopting Despauterius’ novel terminology.
6 As for the sources of the Classical examples, the texts of the poets dominate. According to Cytowska, 38 examples are drawn from Térence, 17 from Virgil, ten from Horace, eight from Plautus, seven from Juvenal, three from Perse and Catull, two from Martial and one from Lucan, Ovid and Stace. Of the prose writers, Cicero is the most popular source of examples, being quoted 13 times (Chomartan 1981: 287).
7 De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi, 1.2, 1971,p p. 76,25-78,13. In this passage, Erasmus criticizes medieval grammarians and the Scholastic method; ‚suppositum‛ and ‚appositum‛ are mentioned on p. 77,1: ‚(…) suppositum apposito recte iungere (…)‛.
8 „Si substantivum reciproci suus respicit ad suppositum verbi, id est, nominativum, qui praecedit verbum (…). Si substantivum respicit ad appositum verbi, id est obliquum qui sequitur verbum (…).“ Paraphrasis seu potius epitome in Elegantiarum libros Laurentii Vallae. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi, 1.4, 1973, p. 312, 909-912.
9 Melanchton, however, defines the sentence: ‚est enim oratio integrae sententiae explicatio‛.