Latin Literature

We are now on the eve of the Renaissance, and the middle ages near their close with the most typical of schoolmen, Johannes Duns Scotus (possibly from Northumberland, d. 1308) and John Wycliffe (1324-84). and the humanist and bibliophile Rich ard of Bury, bishop of Durham (d. If Wycliffe was "the morning star of the Reformation," Petrarch was "the morning star of the Renaissance," and with him may be said to be the beginning of a new era.

Modern Latin Literature.

Latin is no longer an instrument to be developed or modified at will (often to be debased), but a revival, and the neo-latin writers confine themselves to the usage of the classical models, attaining a more correct but less flexible medium for thought : with Petrarch, Boccaccio (1313-75) is natu rally classed, the greatest recoverer of the classical authors, him self an elegant writer in Latin, and Pogeio who lived into the time when the whole intellectual world was changed by the Greek immigrants from fallen Constantinople and the discov ery of printing. Among these humanists were some true poets, writing in Latin, such as Angelo Poliziano (1454-94), Giovanni Gioviano Pontano (1426-1503), Sannazaro (1458-1530), Gio vanni Battista Spagnuoli (John Baptist Mantuanus, 1448-1516), and their prose, after Pope Pius II. (Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, d. 1464), culminates in Erasmus (1466-1536), the greatest of the later humanists. For its comical humour and wide effects men tion must here be made of the Epistolae obscurorum virorum, a terrific and effective, if sometimes unfair, satire on mediaeval piety, learning and style, the work of Johann Reuchlin (1455– 1522) and his friends.

After the Reformation and the growth of nationalism, Latin is still more the medium of a learned few than the common lan guage of all cultured persons. In Scotland, George Buchanan

(1506-82) is a Latin poet of rare merit ; in Wales, the epigram matist, John Owen (d. 1622) ; in England, Ascham and Cheke descend in direct succession to Milton. In France, the Estiennes ("Stephens") and the Scaligers; in Spain, Antonio de Lebrixa ("Nebrissensis," 1444-1522) are great writers of Latin as well as classical scholars.

Later, though it keeps a certain position in the world as the official language of the Roman Catholic Church, Latin writing is more an elegant accomplishment than a natural form of expres sion. Leaving aside the international lawyers, who wrote in Latin on account of the universality of their subject, mention may be made in France of the brothers Santeuil (second half of the 17th century) and Charles Coffin (1676-1749) who wrote Latin hymns with much of mediaeval spirit and feeling. Elsewhere the tra dition of Latin poetry survived in a somewhat narrow stream in Italy and in England; as examples may be mentioned the West minster and Eton schoolmasters, Vincent Bourne (1695-1747) and William Johnson (later Cory, 1823-92), the works of both of whom were not unworthy to be compared with the minor poets of ancient Rome.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Manitius,

Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (in progress, 1911 and 1923) ; Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (19o3—o8) ; Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (1927) ; Raby, History of Christian-Latin Poetry (1927). Selections and anthologies by P. Thomas, Harrington, Beeson, Gaselee, Clark and Game. Short useful bibliography in Strecker, Einfiihrung in das Mittellatein (1928). (S. GA.)