CLEYNAERTS (CLENARDUS or CLENARD), NICOLAS (1495-1542), Belgian grammarian and traveller, was born at Diest, Brabant, on Dec. 5, Educated at the University of Louvain, he became a professor of Latin, which he taught by a conversational method. His lnstitutiones in linguarn graecam (153o), and Meditationes graecanicae (1531) passed through a number of editions, and had many commentators. He maintained that the learner should not be puzzled by elaborate rules until he has obtained a working acquaintance with the language. In pursuit of a scheme for proselytism among the Arabs he travelled in 1532 to Spain, and tried in vain to gain access to the Arabic mss. in the possession of the Inquisition. Finally, in 154o, he set out for Africa to seek information for himself. He reached Fez, then a flourishing seat of Arab learning, but after 15 months of privation and suffering was obliged to return to Granada, and dicd in the autumn of 1542. He was buried in the Alhambra palace.
See his Latin letters to his friends in Belgium, Nicolai Clenardi, Peregrinationum ac de rebus machometicis epistolae elegantissimae (Louvain, 155o), and a more complete edition, Nic. Clenardi Episto larum libri duo (Antwerp, 1561) ; also Victor Chauvin and Alphonse Roersch, "Etude sur la vie et les travaux de Nicolas Clenard" in Memoires couronnes (vol. lx., 1900-01) of the Royal Academy of Belgium, which contains an extensive bibliography.