Franz Junius the Younger

François Junius ( Michael Burghers , 1698, after Anthony van Dyck )

Franz Junius the Younger (born January 29, 1591 in Heidelberg , † November 19, 1677 in Windsor (Berkshire) ), also known as François du Jon , was a pioneer of Germanic philology . As a collector of ancient manuscripts, he published the first edition of some important texts. He also wrote the first comprehensive survey of ancient literature on the subject of the fine arts , which became a milestone in European art history .

Life

Franz Junius was born in Heidelberg . He grew up in Leiden , the Netherlands , when his father, also named Franz Junius, was appointed professor of Hebrew at the University of Leiden in 1592 . In 1602 his parents died and Junius moved in with his future brother-in-law, the humanist scholar Gerhard Johann Vossius in Dordrecht . He studied theology in Leiden and Middelburg .

In 1617 he became a pastor in Hillegersberg , near Rotterdam . However, he resigned from this office the following year after he had refused to take sides in a theological dispute within the Dutch Reformed Church . The dispute was about the question of belief by free will according to Jacobus Arminius or belief by predestination, as represented by Junius' uncle Franciscus Gomarus . After his resignation, Junius decided to travel: he first visited France and then moved to England , where he was hired in 1620 by Thomas Howard , the Earl of Arundel , as his son's tutor and later as a librarian . For Arundel, an avid collector of Greek and Roman art objects, Junius wrote his De pictura veterum , a theological treatise on classical art and a milestone of the neoclassical movement. First published in Latin in 1637, later versions translated by himself in English (1638) and Dutch (1641) followed.

Junius stayed in England for more than twenty years, but fled to the Netherlands with the Earl of Arundel and his wife in 1642 due to the revolt against Charles I. After returning to the Netherlands, Junius began to be interested in the history of the Dutch language , and soon he turned his attention to the other Old Germanic languages as well. As a result of this activity, he published a commentary on the Old High German paraphrase of the Song of Songs , the first edition of a collection of Old English poems and the first edition of the Gothic Bible (Wulfilabibel) with a detailed dictionary . At his death, he left a number of unpublished lexicographical works, an English etymological dictionary of which was published posthumously.

Junius was the owner of an important work of Old English Christian poetry, Codex MS Junius 11 , also known as Cædmon manuscript or Junius codex . Junius was a close friend of John Milton .

The first mention of Heliand in modern times was by Junius when he found a fragment in 1587.

Junius was the first person to study the Codex Argenteus (main manuscript of the Wulfilabibel) in detail. The codex was entrusted to him by Isaac Vossius , who had received it from Queen Christina as part of a debt settlement.

Junius returned to Oxford in 1675 and died in November 1677 in the house of his nephew Isaac Vossius in Windsor, Berkshire ; he was buried in St George's Chapel . In his life he had amassed a large collection of ancient manuscripts, which he bequeathed in his will to the Bodleian Library at Oxford University . Among the bequeathed works were the so-called Cædmon manuscript , also called Junius manuscript after him , and the unique Ormulum .

Works

In his later life Junius devoted himself to studying the old Germanic languages. His writings were able to arouse interest in a subject that had received little attention from scholars at the time.

Significant works are:

• 1637, De pictura veterum , translated as On the Painting of the Ancients in 1638 and as De Schilder-konst der Oude begrepen in drie boecken in 1641. Reprinted in 1659.

A second edition of De pictura , expanded and improved by the author and supplemented by an index, was published posthumously by JG Graevius in 1694, with an account of the life of Junius as a foreword.

• 1655, Observationes in Willerami Abbatis Francicam paraphrasin Cantici Canticorum

"Observations on Abbot Williram's Frankish paraphrase of the Song of Songs" (see Williram von Ebersberg )

• 1655, Annotationes in harmoniam Latino-Francicam quatuor evangelistarum, latine a Tatiano confectam

"Comments on the Latin-Franconian Gospel Harmony, with Tatian's Latin text" ( Old High German Tatian )

• 1655, Cædmonis monachi paraphrasis poetica Genesios ac praecipuarum sacrae paginae historiarum, abhinc annos M.LXX. Anglo-Saxonice conscripta, et nunc primum edita

"The poetic paraphrase of Genesis by the monk Cædmon and other sacred pages of history, written in Anglo-Saxon 1070 years ago, and now being edited for the first time."

The first edition of the important poetic Codex Bodleian Library MS Junius 11, also known as Cædmon manuscript .

• 1664, Gothicum Glossarium, quo Argentii Codicis Vocabula explicantur

"A glossary of the Gothic words of the Codex Argenteus"

• 1665, Quatuor Domini Nostri Iesu Christi Evangeliorum Versiones perantiquae duae, Gothica scilicet et Anglo-Saxonica

"The four Gospels of our Lord Jesus Christ in two ancient versions, namely the Gothic and the Anglo-Saxon"

The Gothic version is Wulfila's translation, it was edited by Junius on the basis of the Codex Argenteus. The old English version was edited by Thomas Marshall . The work includes Junius' dictionary and Marshall's notes.

• 1743, Etymologicum anglicanum

"English Etymology"

Posthumously published in a version by Edward Lye, who added a description of the life of Junius and George Hicke's Old English grammar to the work.

literature

• Rolf H. Bremmer Jr (Ed.): Franciscus Junius FF and His Circle . Rodopi, Amsterdam 1998, ISBN 90-5183-585-X
• Rolf H. Bremmer Jr: 'Franciscus Junius Reads Chaucer. But why? and How? '. In: TA Shippey (Ed.): Appropriating the Middle Ages: Scholarship, Politics, Fraud (= Studies in Medievalism Volume 11). Cambridge 2001, ISBN 0-85991-626-X , pp. 37-72.
• Cornelis Dekker: The Origins of Old Germanic Studies in the Low Countries (= Brill's studies in intellectual history , Volume 92). Brill, Leiden 1999, ISBN 90-04-11031-3 .
• Cornelis Dekker: 'Francis Junius (1591–1677): Copyist or Editor?'. In: Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 29, 2000, pp. 279-96.
• Nadia J. Koch, 'The paradigm shift from ars to artifex around 1600. Ludovicus Demontiosius' and Franciscus Junius 'Systematics of the ancient arts'. In: Ulrich Heinen (ed.), Which antiquity? Competing receptions of antiquity in the baroque (= Wolfenbütteler work on baroque research 47). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2011, pp. 1037-1046.
• Nadia J. Koch, Paradeigma. Ancient art writing as the basis of early modern art theory . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2013, pp. 304–404.
• CSM Rademaker: 'Young Franciscus Junius: 1591-1621', in Rolf H. Bremmer Jr (Ed.): Franciscus Junius FF and His Circle . Rodopi, Amsterdam 1998, ISBN 90-5183-585-X , pp. 1-18.
• Sophie van Romburgh: 'Why Francis Junius (1591–1677) Became an Anglo-Saxonist, or, the Study of Old English for the Elevation of Dutch'. In: TA Shipley (Ed.): Appropriating the Middle Ages: Scholarship, Politics, Fraud (= Studies in Medievalism 11). Cambridge 2001, ISBN 0-85991-626-X . Pp. 5-36.
• Sophie van Romburgh: 'For My Worthy Friend Mr Franciscus Junius'. An Edition of the Correspondence of Francis Junius FF (1591–1677) . Brill, Leiden 2004, ISBN 9789004128804 .
• Thijs Weststeijn: 'Translating “Schilderspraeke:” Painters' Terminology in the Dutch Edition of Franciscus Junius 'The Painting of the Ancients'. In: Harold J. Cook, Sven Dupré (Ed.): Translating Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries. LIT Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-90246-7 , pp. 163-185, 387-397.
• Thijs Weststeijn: Art and Antiquity in the Netherlands and Britain: The Vernacular Arcadia of Franciscus Junius (1591–1677). Brill, Leiden 2015, ISBN 9789004283619 .
• Thijs Weststeijn: 'The Sublime and the “Beholder's Share”: Junius, Rubens, Rembrandt'. In: Journal of the Historians of Netherlandish Art , Volume 8, Number 2, 2016. doi : 10.5092 / jhna.2016.8.2.2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Junius's date of birth is given differently as 1589, 1590 or 1591. The exact date given here was determined by Johan Kerling, quoted in Rademaker (1998: 3). For the original article, see Johan Kerling: Franciscus Junius, '17th-century Lexicography and Middle English' , in: RRK Hartmann (Ed.): Lexeter '83 Proceedings . Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1984, pp. 92-100.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Dekker 1999: 175.