The Age of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and LondonAllen, P. S. (Percy Stafford)
History
The Age of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London
Allen, P. S. (Percy Stafford)
Erasmus, Desiderius, -1536; Renaissance
'Thirdly it is something humble: David to Saul, "After whom is the
King of Israel come out? after a dead dog? after a flea?"
Fourthly it is something contemptible: Goliath to David, "Am I a dog
that thou comest to me with staves?"
Fifthly it denies, like an apostate: "A dog returned to its vomit."
Sixthly it adheres.' But here the interpreter goes astray under the
preoccupation of the times: 'heret significat hereticum et infidelem;
hence "It is not good to take the children's bread and cast it unto
dogs, that is to heretics and infidels."
Seventhly it is a star; hence are named the dog days, in which that
star has dominion.
Eighthly it swims in the sea; the dog fish.'
The qualities of the dog are also expressed in this verse: 'Latrat in
ede canis, nat in equore, fulget in astris. Et venit canis
originaliter a cano--is.' So Garland, or his commentator, abridged.
Of sal he says:
Est sal prelatus, equor, sapientia, mimus,
Sal pultes condit, sal est cibus et reprehendit.
Here again there is a full commentary; but the only interpretation
that we need notice is the first, 'Salt denotes a prelate of the
Church; for it is said in the Gospels, Ye are the salt of the earth.'
When he composed these lines, Garland must surely have had his eye on
ecclesiastical preferment.
Another line is interesting, as illustrating the confusion between c
and t in mediaeval manuscripts:
Est katonque malum, katademon nascitur inde.
The commentary runs: 'Kathon est idem quod malum. Inde dicitur
kathodemon, i.e. spiritus malignus seu dyabolus, et venit a kathon,
i.e. malum, et demon, sciens, quasi mala sciens.' You will notice also
the inconstancy of h, and the indifference to orthography which allows
the same word to appear as katademon in the text and kathodemon in the
commentary.
Garland's _Textus_ is mostly Latin; but in the last composition of his
life, the forty-two distiches entitled _Cornutus_, 'one on the horns
of a dilemma', he is mainly occupied with Greek words adopted into
Latin: using of course Latin characters. Some specimens will show the
mediaeval standards of Greek: I quote from the text and commentary
edited in 1481 by John Drolshagen, who was master of the sixth class
at Zwolle.
Kyria chere geram cuius ph[=i]lantr[)o]pos est bar, Per te doxa
theos nect[=e]n [)e]t [)v]r[=a]n[)i]c[)i]s ymas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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