Neo-Latin
All Senior Members, Postgraduate Students, and Academic Visitors Welcome
Cultures across Languages – Cambridge Society for Neo-Latin Studies Seminar
The seminar brings together scholars and students interested in any aspect of Latin in the postclassical world, whether this is imaginative literature in Latin, or Latin as the primary language of intellectual exchange in premodern periods, and its sundry interactions with the vernaculars. In its new home under the English Faculty’s sponsorship, the seminar aims to offer a space for thinking in particular about English writing and cultural practice against the broader multilingual canvas of culture within, across, and beyond premodern Europe.
2024-25
Sheldon Brammall (Birmingham), Thurs 24th October, 12-1:15pm, Faculty of English, SR/24
'Bembo's Culex and the Play of Erudition'
Bembo’s De Virgilii culice et Terentii fabulis (1530) is an oddity in the history of classical scholarship. Part critical edition and part Ciceronian dialogue, it purports to relate a conversation from the early 1490s, when two of the great luminaries of late quattrocento scholarship sat together in a garden in Rome and excitedly discussed the merits of two manuscripts. Whereas modern scholars have tended to focus on Bembo’s editorial practice, in this paper I will explore how Bembo’s reflections on the Culex fit into a longer history of creative responses to the Appendix Vergiliana in Renaissance Europe. The paper will show how Bembo’s dialogue is a key link in a line of enthusiastic and highly erudite readings of the Appendix—a line which stretches from Poliziano, through Bembo’s circle of Venetian humanists, and on to Joseph Scaliger and the Pléiade poets.
Anastasia Stylianou (Warwick), Thurs 21st November, 12-1:15pm, Faculty of English, GR/04
'Ethnic Greek Authors in the Production and Circulation of Neo-Greek Texts in Early Modern Britain'
Early modern books and manuscripts in Greek, or relating to Greek history, have often been viewed through a rather narrow lens. The (unconscious) focus has tended to be on the Western-European reception of Classical Antiquity and its influence upon Western intellectual, cultural, and bibliographical history. In contrast, the ways in which the works’ production, transmission, circulation, and usage relates to their (Greek) ethno-cultural history has, until recently, been largely overlooked, as has the fact that these objects often served as a point of contact between the early modern East and West.
This paper examines the writings of two Greek travellers to early modern Britain: Nikandros Noukios and Christophoros Angelos. Taking Noukios and Angelos as my main case studies, I shall explore how an analysis of the role of ethnic Greek actors can extend our understanding of the broader production and use of Greek texts in Reformation Britain.
Noukios, a Venetian-Greek scribe and editor, travelled through Western Europe in the 1540s; he recorded his experiences in a three-volume travel-diary, written in Neo-Greek, and dedicated to his humanist friends in Venice. Although the text remained unpublished in the early modern period, it circulated in several manuscript copies, one of which was later owned by Archbishop William Laud, who annotated it with marginal comments in Greek.
Christopher Angelos, a monk from Ottoman Greece, arrived in England in 1608, as a religious refugee. He spent the rest of his life in England, teaching first at Cambridge and then at Oxford. His diverse collection of publications included the first account of the Ottoman Greek Church published in England by a Greek, as well as an illustrated pamphlet depicting the religious persecution he had experienced in the Ottoman Empire, and a treatise on the apocalypse. Angelos’ writings were published in Greek, Latin, and English editions; they are, thus, particularly significant when considering translation from Neo-Greek in early modern Britain.
Lent Term 2025
Iván Parga Ornelas (Oxford), Thursday, 6th February, 12-1:15pm, Faculty of English, Board Room
'Recasting the role of women in the religious epics of Maffeo Vegio (1407-1458) and Baptista Spagnoli Mantuanus (1447-1516)'
This paper will examine the role of women in the religious poetry of two Renaissance Neo-Latin poets: Maffeo Vegio, author of the Laudatio Beatae Monicae, a panegyric with epic elements in praise of Saint Monica of Tagaste; and Giovanni Baptista Spagnoli ‘Mantuanunus’, author of seven short epics, titled Parthenicae, about the Virgin Mary and six early women martyrs. I argue that, while Neo-Latin poetry tends to be heavily imitative, the lack of models of female heroism in classical epic presented Vegio and Mantuanus with an opportunity to innovate and ‘Christianise’ the genre. In their treatment of holy women, these poets create new categories of heroism, redefine certain concepts associated with women in classical epic (such as love and motherhood), and often subvert gender and genre expectations; for example, by presenting women as warriors and (in Mantuanus’ case) men as mad lovers reminiscent of Dido in Virgil’s Aeneid or the Ovidian Heroides.Alex Tadel (Warwick), Thursday, 27th February, 12-1:15pm, Faculty of English, Board Room
'An Exceptional Woman? Polissena Messalto Grimaldi (c.1402–1467) and the Variety of Women’s Latin Writing in the Quattrocento'
While women Latin writers like Isotta Nogarola, Cassandra Fedele and Laura Cereta have been the subject of numerous studies, Polissena Messalto Grimaldi (c.1402–1467) has remained a footnote to her more famous contemporaries. Based on original archival research and the first detailed analysis of her writing, my paper will demonstrate how her identity and status have been misconstrued and show that she was in fact the author of a small but significant body of Latin texts. As these texts have not been examined until now, I will introduce each of them, with a view to what they tell us of Polissena’s education and networks, and I will consider in some more detail her most interesting piece, a long discursive letter on the education of women. After this overview of her life and work, I will argue that even though Polissena’s background and literary activity may be exceptional, they nevertheless point to the possibility of a greater social, temporal and geographical diversity in women’s Latin writing than has usually been perceived as the norm.
These are lunchtime seminars, please feel free to bring your lunch.
For further information about the seminar, please contact Andrew Taylor (awt24@cam.ac.uk), Tania Demetriou (td227@cam.ac.uk), Anna-Maria Hartmann (amrh3@cam.ac.uk) or Jacob Currie (jmrc2@cam.ac.uk)
