Johannes Secundus

Johannes Secundus (also Janus Secundus, actually Johann Nico Ever Aerts; * November 15, 1511 in The Hague, † September 25, 1536 in Saint- Amand ) was a Dutch poet, painter and sculptor ( what was the Renaissance ideal of a comprehensive artist ). His two brothers - Hadrianus Marius and Nicolaus Grudius - were also famous neo-Latin poet.

His father was Nicolaes Ever Aerts, in its time a famous lawyer and friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam. 1528 the family moved from The Hague to Mechelen, where Secundus wrote his first work with Latin elegies. In 1532 he went with his brother to Bourges to study law. He earned his license there ( licentia ) and went in 1533 to Madrid to the Spanish court, Charles V, where another brother, Grudius worked. There, John spent two years as secretary of the Archbishop of Toledo. For health reasons, he returned to Malines and died at St. Amand in September 1536 at the age of 24 years.

Secundus was an avid writer and has written numerous books in his short life with elegies, epigrams, odes, Versepisteln and many prose works in neo-Latin language.

However, his most important work was the Basia, a short compilation of 19 poems in various poetic meters, in which he treats the subject of the kiss in imitation of Catullus. Include variations on the central theme

• The natural fertility
• The " arithmetic of the kiss "
• Kisses as a food and medicinal source
• Kisses, bringing the death or wounding
• The Soul Exchange by kissing

Secundus are separately also elements of Neo-Platonism and the Petrarchism into his work.