Georgius Macropedius

Macropedius. Portrait of Philips Galle. Poem by Benito Arias Montanus. Ghent University Library

Georgius Macropedius (Dutch Joris van Lanckvelt ; * probably April 23, 1487 in Gemert ; † July 1558 in Herzogenbusch ) was a Dutch humanist , headmaster and neo-Latin playwright .

Life

Macropedius was born in Gemert in 1487 . In the elementary school there he learned to read, write and sing, probably also a little arithmetic and Latin. When he was nine or ten years old, he left Gemert to settle in Herzogenbusch , at that time a city with lively economic activity, where the painter Hieronymus Bosch also lived. Joris van Lanckvelt lived here in one of the houses of the brothers from living together and went to the chapter school that belonged to the local St. John's Cathedral (and which Erasmus of Rotterdam had already attended a few years earlier ). After completing his studies, in 1502 he joined the Cooperative of the Brothers of Living Together. He called himself Frater Georgius now and studied Latin, Greek, mathematics and music, perhaps Hebrew as well. A few years later he was ordained a priest and became a teacher in the Latin school. At that time (around 1510) he began his literary work (with the drama Asotus ).

Hieronymus School in Utrecht in the 17th century, drawing by J. Liefland, Utrecht 1857

In the meantime, Joris van Lanckvelt used his Greek name according to humanistic custom: Georgius Macropedius. In Liège he was for a few years (1524–1527) rector of the School of Brothers of Life Together. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, this Jeronimos school was considered the best of all the brother schools. A year or two later he was back in Herzogenbusch. There he published a grammar of the Greek language in 1530. In 1531 he was transferred from his order to Utrecht, at the time the largest city in the northern Netherlands, at the request of the Utrecht city administration. Here he became a teacher and principal of the Hieronymus School. Every year he composed a school song and composed the music for it himself.

In 1557 his work as rector of the school in Utrecht came to an end. Macropedius returned to Herzogenbusch as a sickly old man plagued by gout. In July 1558, during a plague epidemic, a fever took him away. He was buried in the city in the church of his brotherhood. The church with the grave and a painting with his portrait no longer exist today.

Works

Methodus de Conscribendis Epistolis . Last edition by Abraham Miller, London 1649. Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA.

Macropedius endeavored to write better school books than those handed down from the Middle Ages . He published seven different textbooks, which were mainly printed in Herzogenbusch, Utrecht, Antwerp, but also in Basel, Cologne, London and Paris. His most widely printed book is the Epistolica , a textbook on rhetoric and the art of letter writing. It was first printed in Antwerp in 1543 and later several times in Herzogenbusch and Leiden. After Macropedius' death it was printed in the German Empire and in England under the title Methodus de Conscribendis Epistolis in Dillingen, Basel, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main and ten times in London (last time in 1649 by Abraham Miller).

Macropedius owes his greatest fame to his tragedies and comedies, which were composed between 1510 and 1556 and published from 1535:

• 1535 Rebelles ("The Defiant Students") and Aluta
• 1536 Petriscus
• 1537 Asotus
• 1538 Andrisca
• 1539 Hecastus
• 1540 Bassarus
• 1541 Lazarus mendicus
• 1544 Josephus

As part of the complete edition of his pieces, which appeared in two volumes from 1552 to 1553 ( Omnes Georgii Macropedii Fabulae Comicae ), Adamus and Hypomone were also published for the first time. The edition of Jesus scholasticus concluded in 1556 .

German translation of the rebel by S. Roth, Neuötting 1557. Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck.

Macropedius received the inspiration for poetry - as he himself explains in the preface to his comedy Rebelles - from the humanist Johannes Reuchlin , who laid the foundations of neo-Latin drama in Germany around 1500. Macropedius dealt with biblical-historical and fictional material: Rebelles and Petriscus are school dramas about school, pupils, teachers and parents, Aluta and Andrisca antics and Bassarus a barrel night play. Biblical material is used in the pieces Asotus (of the prodigal son), Lazarus , Josephus (Joseph in Egypt), Adamus and Jesus scholasticus . Hypomone is an allegory.

The pieces were widely distributed throughout Europe and have been translated into other languages ​​several times. The Hecastus, for example, was published in a German version by Hans Sachs in 1549 , while Rebelles and Aluta were translated into German and published in 1557 by Simon Roth , a schoolmaster in Neuötting (Bavaria). The Asotus was performed by students at Cambridge in 1565 and by students at Prague University in 1566.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Macropedius was forgotten. It was rediscovered at the end of the nineteenth century. Since then, some works have appeared on him. However, modern, critical editions of his pieces have so far been in short supply.

Swedish translation of the Hecastus by S. Dalius (printed by L. Löhnbohm in Göteborg 1681, 142 years after the first printing). Royal Library, Stockholm

expenditure

• Rudolphus Cornelis Engelberts (Ed.): Georgius Macropedius: Bassarus. Gianotten, Tilburg 1968 (critical edition of the Latin text with Dutch translation)
• Henricus Paulus Maria Puttiger (Ed.): Georgius Macropedius' Asotus. De Graaf, Nieuwkoop 1988, ISBN 90-6004-394-4 (Latin text with Dutch translation)
• Yehudi Lindeman: Macropedius: Two Comedies. Rebelles (The Rebels), Bassarus. De Graaf, Nieuwkoop 1983, ISBN 90-6004-376-6 (Latin text and English translation)

literature

• Thomas W. Best: Macropedius. (= Twayne's World Authors Series. 218). New York 1972.
• R. Dammer, B. Jeßing: Jedermann in the 16th century. The Hecastus dramas by Georgius Macropedius and Hans Sachs. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019944-4 .
• H. Giebels, F. Slits: Georgius Macropedius 1487-1558. Leven en works by a Brabantse humanist. Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, Tilburg 2005, ISBN 90-70641-65-8 . (incl. CD-ROM with transcriptions of all works)
• Jan Bloemendal (Ed.): The Latin Playwright Georgius Macropedius (1487-1558) in European Contexts. (= European Medieval Drama. 13). Brepols Publishers, Turnhout 2009, ISBN 978-2-503-53091-8 .
• OW Tetzlaff: Dutch neo-Latin dramas in their impact on Germany in the sixteenth century. Austin 1969.

Web links

• Literature by and about Georgius Macropedius in the catalog of the German National Library
• Lecture at the Gemert Macropedius College