Macropedius

Georgius Macropedius (also: Joris van Lanckvelt ) (* possible April 23, 1487 in Gemert, † July 1558 in 's-Hertogenbosch ), was a Dutch humanist, principals and Neo-Latin playwright.

Life

Macropedius (actually Joris van Lanckvelt ) was born 1487 in Gemert. In the local elementary school, he learned to read, write, and sing, and probably a little arithmetic, and Latin. At the age of nine or ten years he left Gemert, to settle in s-Hertogenbosch, at that time a large city with a lively economic busyness, in the painter Hieronymus Bosch lived. Joris van Lanckvelt lived here in one of the houses of the Brethren of the Common Life, and went into the school chapter, which belonged to the local Johann Cathedral ( and had some years previously attended Erasmus of Rotterdam). After completing his studies he joined in 1502 the Association of the Brethren of the Common Life a. He now called himself Frater Georgius and studied Latin, Greek, mathematics and music, maybe even Hebrew. Some years later he was ordained a priest and became a teacher in the grammar school. At that time ( around 1510 ) he began ( with the drama Asotus ) his literary work.

Meanwhile, Joris van Lanckvelt called by humanistic habit with his Greek name: Georgius Macropedius. In Liège, he was a few years (1524-1527) rector of the school of the Brothers of the Common Life. This Jerome School was at the beginning of the sixteenth century as the best of all the brothers schools. A year or two later he was back in s-Hertogenbosch. There he published in 1530 a grammar of the Greek language. In 1531 he was - at the request of the Utrecht city council - offset from his order to Utrecht, then the largest city in the northern Netherlands. Here he became a teacher and rector of St. Jerome School. Every year he wrote a school song and composed himself to the music.

1557 was his work as rector of the school in Utrecht an end. As a sickly old man, plagued by gout, Macropedius returned to Hertogenbosch. In July 1558 during a plague epidemic, a fever carried him there. He was buried in the city in the Church of his brotherhood. The church with the grave as well as a painting with his picture no longer exist, however.

Works

Macropedius was striving traditional textbooks better than those from the Middle Ages to write. He published seven textbooks, which were mainly printed in s-Hertogenbosch, Utrecht, Antwerp, but also in Basel, Cologne, London and Paris. His most printed book is the Epistolica, a textbook on rhetoric and the art of letter writing. It was printed for the first time in 1543 in Antwerp and later several times in s-Hertogenbosch, and in Leiden. After the death of Macropedius it was entitled Methodus de Conscribendis Epistolis yet printed in the German Empire, and in England at Dillingen, Basel, Cologne, Frankfurt and in London ten times (last time in 1649 by Abraham Miller).

His greatest fame owes Macropedius his tragedies and comedies, which were created 1510-1556 and published in 1535:

As part of the complete edition of his works, which appeared in two volumes in 1552-1553 ( Omnes Georgii Macropedii Fabulae Comicae ), also still Adamus and hypomone were first published. The day ended with the 1556 edition of Jesus scholasticus.

The excitation densities obtained for Macropedius - as he himself points out in the preface to his comedy Rebelles - by the humanist Johannes Reuchlin, who had laid the foundations of the neo-Latin drama in 1500 in Germany. Macropedius treated biblical- historical and fictional materials: Rebelles and Petriscus are school dramas about school, students, teachers and parents, and Aluta Andrisca farces and Bassarus a Faßnachtspiel. Biblical materials are processed in the pieces Asotus ( the prodigal son ), Lazarus, Josephus (Joseph in Egypt), Adamus and Jesus scholasticus. Hypomone is an allegory.

The pieces experienced widespread throughout Europe and were repeatedly translated into other languages. The Hecastus about was published in 1549 by Hans Sachs in a German version, and Rebelles were Aluta 1557 by Simon Roth, a schoolmaster in Neuoetting (Bavaria), translated into German and published. The Asotus was performed in 1565 by students at Cambridge and in 1566 by the students of the University of Prague.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth century Macropedius fell into oblivion. End of the nineteenth century he was rediscovered. Since then, several works about him have appeared. Modern critical editions of his plays are so far, however, scarce.