Neo-Latin Around the World

One of the greatest obstacles encountered in the study of the early modern period is one of definitions. For the two major intellectual movements there is a wide range of opinions as to how they should be defined. Scholasticism is alternately a philosophy rejected by the humanists or a methodology appreciated and appropriated by them, while humanism is either a cultural program, a movement towards civic-mindedness, a secular challenging, if not flaunting, of norms, or a development driven by real religious fervor.

Michael Serveto or Servetus was born in Spain in 1511 and on his mother’s side, belonged to a distinguished family of converted Jews. After a brilliant career as an author and physician, he was burned at the stake for heresy in Geneva in 1553, an act for which Serveto held John Calvin primarily responsible.

On May 26, 1742, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf (1700–1760) gave a speech in Philadelphia, in the British colony of Pennsylvania—in Latin. It was his birthday, and he had come to a momentous decision: he would renounce his nobility and be known henceforth simply as John. Aware that even the best educated men in Philadelphia would have trouble following his Latin oration, he took care to have copies of the text printed in advance by the city’s foremost printer, Benjamin Franklin, which were then distributed to his audience.

In 1561, the English poet Nicholas Allen published in Paris his translation of Aratus’ Phaenomena, a popular and much-admired Hellenistic poem in dactylic hexameters that described the fixed constellations and a variety of weather signs, both celestial and terrestrial. Allen’s translation offers an unparalleled opportunity to analyze the practice of poetic translation from the Greek during the sixteenth century because it stands at the end of a long history of Latin translations of Aratus’ poem that were published during a period of over 1,500 years.