{"id":1565,"date":"2015-05-21T12:46:11","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T16:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2017-09-06T12:01:39","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T16:01:39","slug":"extensively-annotated-plautus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/?p=1565","title":{"rendered":"Extensively Annotated Plautus"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Plautus, Titus Maccius.\u00a0M. accii Plauti comoediae xx. diligente cura, & singulari studio Joachimi Camerarii Pabeperg. emendatius nunc quam ante unquam ab ullo, editae<\/em>.<\/i>\u00a0Edited by Joachim Camerarius. Basel: Johannes Herwagen, [1552]. Octavo. USTC 674254<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Collation: a-z8<\/sup>, A-Z8<\/sup>, Aa-Ii8<\/sup><\/p>\n

The present octavo of Plautus\u2019s\u00a0Comedies<\/i>\u00a0contains the version edited by Joachim Camerarius (1500\u20131574). Camerarius was one of the most important classicists of his era, translating many of the Greeks into Latin and providing the commentary on Plautus that appears in this volume. He also wrote widely on other topics, including numismatics and horsemanship. He knew Erasmus, and, while studying in Wittenberg, came into contact with Philip Melanchthon, who became a friend. Camerarius was present with Melanchthon at the diet of Augsburg in 1530; correspondence between the two men survives.<\/p>\n

Camerarius\u2019s work on Plautus proved influential, and appeared in at least ten editions between 1530 and the end of the century. Copies are not uncommon. What sets the present book apart from others is not so much the text, but the extensive commentary in the form of earnest and engaged annotations that surrounds it. Not a single page goes unmarked, and, on many pages, annotations fill most of the\u00a0marginal and interlinear space available. Some marks even connect\u00a0passages together across an entire opening.<\/p>\n

Helpfully, one annotator signed the title page of the book when he had it in 1571: \u201cSum Iohannis Plancomarij \/ sortis beneficio. \/ 1571.\u201d At this time, Johannes Plancomarius\u2014Johan Planckemair of Aichach*\u2014taught at the St. Anne Gymnasium in Augsburg. Founded in 1531 at the order of the Evangelical Council of that city, the school was designed as a Protestant alternative to the Catholic institutions in the region. The famous humanist Hieronymus Wolf, who was himself a student of Melanchthon and Camerarius, was one of its first rectors. Indeed, he may have been responsible for Plancomarius\u2019s appointment in 1566. In a letter to the physician Johan Schenck in 1578, he refers to Plancomarius as a close associate (\u201caffinis\u201d) and a colleague (\u201ccollega\u201d). And there is much more to be gleaned about Plancomarius’s time at St. Anne from other German sources. What is already clear is that, due to the association with Plancomarius and an important school, this book will contribute to our understanding of the Wolf-Camerarius circle and the educational system under Protestantism. It is entirely possible\u2014perhaps even likely\u2014that Plancomarius had met Camerarius himself. Annotations in his hand on the title page and its verso discuss Camerarius directly, \u00a0evincing a specific\u00a0interest in the volume’s editor.<\/p>\n

Before teaching at St. Anne, Plancomarius was a student at the university in Ingolstadt. He entered the Faculty of Arts there on 11 June 1557. The scholar Peter Macardle has located a volume that Plancomarius inscribed that same year, probably soon\u00a0after beginning his studies. It is a copy of publisher Johannes Oporinus’s collection of biblical plays, Dramata Sacra <\/em>(1547)<\/a>, and is now at the British Library under the\u00a0shelfmark 11712.b.1. Ten years before\u00a0the book ended up with Plancomarius, it had been given to another individual\u2014a student\u2014by the dramatist\u00a0Hieronymus Ziegler, who inscribed it. When he first donated the volume, Ziegler was actually a teacher at St. Anne, but had moved to Ingolstadt by 1557. Presumably, Ziegler served as one of Plancomarius’s instructors. In Dramata Sacra<\/em>, a hand that is probably Plancomarius’s has annotated only one play: Ziegler’s Samson<\/em>.* These are the two Plancomarius inscriptions, as reproduced by Macardle:<\/p>\n

\"Macardle<\/a><\/p>\n

In addition, a letter from\u00a0Plancomarius to Johannes Ehinger survives in a bound volume at the Wurttemberg State Library in Stuttgart. It is dated 23 June 1593, and is documented in Die Autographensammlung des Stuttgarter Konistorialdirektors Friedrich Wilhelm Frommann<\/a><\/em>. It is preserved as part of a larger set\u00a0of letters written to Ehinger. Plancomarius also inscribed the\u00a0autograph album\u00a0<\/em>of Georg Salzhuber<\/a>\u00a0in an entry\u00a0dated 3 March 1576.\u00a0Finally, I have\u00a0located a third book that Plancomarius owned. It is now at the\u00a0Regensburg State Library, and can be found in their provenance database<\/a>. The title page specifying that Plancomarius\u00a0owned the book has been\u00a0digitized<\/a>\u00a0along with the rest of the volume\u2014a\u00a0sammelband<\/em>\u2014that contains it.<\/p>\n

Plancomarius’s inscription in the Plautus, stating that he\u00a0acquired the volume “sortis beneficio,” is obscure. It may represent a poetic way of indicating only that he came into possession of the book in a way one normally does, that fate was behind such a pleasant acquisition. But, because the language is so atypical, it may mean that he actually received the book by lot, through a kind of\u00a0lottery or selection process. In 1571, Plancomarius was already an instructor at St. Anne, and it is difficult to know\u00a0what circumstances could\u00a0have made this kind of thing\u00a0possible. I have not located another ownership\u00a0inscription using\u00a0this phrase.<\/p>\n

Because the annotations in the Plautus are so extensive, it is difficult to ascertain the precise number of hands present in the volume.\u00a0Some that appear to represent distinct readers\u00a0because of variations in size and the thickness of the strokes are almost certainly Plancomarius writing at different times, though there are others that may point to other individuals. At least one of the annotations, which quotes a letter from Camerarius to Wolf, must be from 1583 or later, when Wolf\u2019s correspondence appeared in the printed edition it cites. Taken individually and as a complete set,\u00a0the annotations demonstrate serious\u00a0engagement with the state of the text, the commentary tradition, and the nature of the comedies themselves.<\/p>\n

The Plautus\u00a0collates complete, and is in a nineteenth-century quarter binding with marbled paper over pasteboard. The pastedowns and endpaper bifolia are of yellow paper. The bookblock is sewn on three supports; they are detached at the upper hinge. They do, however, remain\u00a0secured at the lower hinge, and the joint between each board and the spine covering is\u00a0intact with only minor rubbing. The binding was made with a hollow back, and bookblock remains protected when the covers are closed. \u00a0On the spine, a compartment defined by gilt ornamental rolls (and blind rules) contains “Plauti,” which is also gilt. “Z” appears near the foot, and there appears to be a blindstamped “1” or “I” to the right of it. Although not ideal, the detachment at the front has the unexpected virtue of revealing a spine liner recycled from a nineteenth-century German-language newspaper. Among other things, the preserved section contains part of an\u00a0advertisement for the\u00a0Germania Life Insurance Company at 90 Broadway, in New York City, and there is a mention of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility dated 14 October 1865.\u00a0This\u00a0may\u00a0indicate\u00a0that the binder was a German immigrant working in or near New York not long after the Civil War.\u00a0According to a report issued in 1868<\/a>, the Germania Life Insurance Company was founded in 1860 and was, in 1868, located at the 90 Broadway address. An insurance periodical<\/a> confirms that the insurance company occupied that office in 1861.\u00a0Another report<\/a>, from 1886, locates the company at a new address, 20 Nassau Street, which helps to establish a terminus ante quem\u00a0<\/em>for the newspaper clipping, and, in all likelihood, the binding itself.<\/p>\n

The final two leaves show some chipping at the edge, which does not affect the printed text, but cuts a few words of the manuscript annotations that appear at the foot. In addition, there is a worm track that has damaged the foot of the final three pages, obliterating some letters from the same set of annotations. The leaves of the volume are otherwise crisp and intact. Despite the fact that the book has been rebound, the remainder of the text and annotations remain wholly uncropped. Somewhat miraculously, the block does not appear to have been trimmed since the 16th century.<\/p>\n

A printed label on the front pastedown reads: \u201cEx bibliotheca Congregationis SS Redemtoris. Rochester, N. Y.\u201d It includes unused spaces for shelving information. In addition, there is library card pocket at rear, labeled \u201cMt. St. Alphonsus Library\u201d with a list of the library\u2019s rules. A stamp for the Rochester congregation, \u201cC. S. S. R.,\u201d appears on the title page, and a Mt. St. Alphonsus library stamp appears on the title page verso and on a page deep within the text. Mt. St. Alphonsus was a seminary in Esopus, New York, that later became a retreat center and finally closed in 2012. The spine liner, mentioned above, locates the binding to America in the nineteenth century, probably in New York City or nearby. The volume was sold in 2013 at the auction of the Mt. St. Aphonsus Library, and appears to have come to that institution from the Rochester congregation. Most recently, it was sold by\u00a0an online bookseller in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Both the annotations and printed content in this volume exemplify the kind of humanism that scholars routinely associate with the Renaissance. It presents the rare occasion in which we have a heavily (and interestingly) annotated book that can be connected not only with a known individual, but with a significant institution, and a network of influential humanists. This important book will no doubt reveal much to historians of humanism and education, researchers in the history of reading, those interested in the reception of drama, and literary scholars\u00a0more generally.\u00a0SOLD<\/strong><\/p>\n

* For information on Plancomarius’s life before arriving at St. Anne and the volume at the British Library that he annotated, see Peter Macardle, “Hieronymus Ziegler’s Handwriting: Autographs in Two Books in the British Library,” Wolfenb\u00fctteler Renaissance-Mitteilungen<\/em> 18.2 (1994): 51\u201355.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plautus, Titus Maccius.\u00a0M. accii Plauti comoediae xx. diligente cura, & singulari studio Joachimi Camerarii Pabeperg. emendatius nunc quam ante unquam ab ullo, editae.\u00a0Edited by Joachim Camerarius. Basel: Johannes Herwagen, [1552]. Octavo. USTC 674254. Collation: a-z8, A-Z8, Aa-Ii8 The present octavo of Plautus\u2019s\u00a0Comedies\u00a0contains the version edited… Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1568,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-catalog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":122,"href":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1802,"href":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions\/1802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aarontpratt.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}