Peregrinationum, ac de rebus Machometicis epistolae — Louvain 1551

Peregrinationum, ac de rebus Machometicis epistolae elegantissimae. Accescêre [sic] autem supra priorem editionem aliquot epistolae ut amoenae ita salsae, sed citra gentis alicuius offensionem. — Lovanii, Apud Martinum Rotarium, 1551. [Colophon: Louanij typis Reyneri Velpij Diestensis], [Louvain, Renier Velpius for M. Rotarius].

8vo (148 x 88 mm). A-K⁸ L⁴ (but lacking blank L₄): (83) ff. 18th century brown morocco, spine gilt. With a few phrases printed in Arabic and Greek. – Adams C-2160; Bakelants/Hoven, Bibl. des oeuvres de Nicolas Clénard, no. 558.

Roesch, Correspondance de Nicolas Clénard, 3 vols. Bruxelles 1940f., p. xviii: „Èdition forte correcte et qui renferme plusieurs leçons intéressantes.“

 

¶ „… When Clenardus‘ term of Houterlee’s college had ended and Louvain did not seem to offer any further prospects for the time being, Clenardus was compelled to look elsewhere. Juan Luis Vives seems to have convinced him that Muslims could be converted to Christianity by force of persuasion, and he resolved to learn Arabic. He entered the service of Hernando Colón, the son of the discoverer of America, whom he accompanied back to Spain towards the end of 1531. He taught Greek and Latin in Salamanca until 1533, when he joined Prince Henry of Portugal, who at the age of twenty-one was already archbishop of Braga. Under Henry’s auspices, Clenardus founded a humanist college at Braga which he directed until 1538 [see J. Klucas: N. C. A Pioneer of the New Learning in Renaissance Portugal]. Thereafter Henry’s support enabled him to study Arabic in Granada and for a while at Fez in Morocco. He was still in Granada at the time of his death.“ (Bietenholz I 312f.) He was buried in the Alhambra.

Feller (Dictionnaire historique…, 1818-1820, III, 179) notes that Clenardus lost all his Arabic books brought together at great expense as a result of the persecution in Tangiers. In September 1541 Clenardus fled to Spain.

Clenardus‘ fame at the time was based on these letters about Islam, his studies of the Arabic language, about the situation in what is Morocco today, his partly adventurous travelling – and not, as one might think, on his most successful book, the Greek grammar. The 18-page letter to Latomus of 9 April 1541 from Fez gives a deep insight into the organisation of studies, the university and even the book trade in the intellectual and religious centre of Morocco at that time.

The 1550 edition of Peregrinationum by Latomus‘ nephew Jacobus Latomus II has 14 letters to Latomus and Frans Houwers. In the present edition ten letters are added: to Arnold Streyter, Martinus a Vorda, Joachim Polites, and Rutger Rescius. These letters are written in Evora in Portugal, and in Fez in Morocco between 1534 and 1541.

 

The 1551 edition has the following letters; numbers in () refer to the edition of Roesch:

Jacobus Latomus (ca. 1475-1542; lifelong friend of Clenardus, opponent of Erasmus and Luther, among other things he wrote De trium linguarum et studii theologici ratione dialogus, Antwerp 1519.) 

Evora 24 march 1534 (23) / Evora 26 march 1535 (24) / Braga 21 aug.1537 (42) / Granada 12 June 1539 (47) / Gibraltar 7 apr. 1540 (48) / Ceuta 15 apr. 1540 (49) / Tétouan 21 apr. 1540 (50) / Fès 8 may 1540 (51) / Fès 9 apr. 1541 (54) / Braga 9 sept. 1538 (46)

Frans Houwers (a close friend and fellow student of Clenardus at the university of Louvain)

Braga 27 febr. 1538 (45) / Evora 15 dec. 1536 (34) / Louvain May/June 1531 (7) / Paris 21 oct. 1530 (5)

 

Quae sequuntur, omnes recens accessere (G_1b):

Arnold Streyters (1594-1560, Dutch humanist, became abbot of the monastery in Tongerlo in 1555)

Fès 12 apr. 1541 (55)

Joachim Polites (Dutch humanist and poet, published his Poemata in 1548. Between 1533 and ca. 1547 he lectured classics at the academy of Barcelona. It seems that he was back in Belgium around 1548.)

Evora 27 dec.1536 (36)

Martin a Vorda (? – 1561; is mentioned as a canon of the Collegiate Church of Saint Gommaire in Lierre.

Evora 24 April 1534 (18) (On this letter Roesch notes: „Clenard’s borrowing of the language of philosophers is worthy of Molière“. (III 17, n. 2)

Ioachim Polites

Leuven 23 aug.1531 (11) / Evora 22 apr. 1536 (31)

Martinus a Vorda

Evora 10 jan. 1537 (38)

Ioachim Polites

Evora 8 july 1537 (39)

Rutger Rescius (c. 1495-1545; well-known humanist and printer of Greek, the first to lecture Greek at the Collegium Trillingue in Louvain.)

Evora 2 oct. 1536 (33) / Evora 28/29 march 1535 (25) / Evora 23 march 1535 (22)