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Thucydides in the Circle of Philip Melanchthon

Richards, John
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376788422

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Greek and Latin.
This dissertation studies the reception of the Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460-395 B.C.) by Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560), professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg and theological right hand man to Martin Luther, as well as by a number of Melanchthon’s students and friends. I begin by examining the work on Thucydides done by Melanchthon himself, which primarily comes from an unpublished manuscript now in Hamburg, Germany, Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek Cod. Philol. 166, dated to the 1550s. As it stands, this manuscript claims a unique and important status as one of the oldest – if not the oldest – examples in existence of lectures delivered on Thucydides in the Latin West. I will also analyze the 1565 commentary on Thucydides by Melanchthon’s close professional friend, Joachim Camerarius, and the 1569 commentary and translation of Thucydides by one of Melanchthon’s students, Vitus Winsemius. Studying the popularity of Thucydides during the resurgence of Greek studies in the Renaissance proves to be an endeavor with many blank spaces. Evidence of commentaries on Thucydides from the Italian Quattrocento, where Thucydides was first reintroduced in the West, is very limited. Thanks however to Marianne Pade’s article on Thucydides in the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, we can now see that Thucydides enjoyed considerable popularity across the Alps among certain Humanist members of the early German Protestant Reformation. Despite Pade’s work, however, little detailed research has been done on the reception of Thucydides (or most Classical authors) in German Protestant Humanism. This dissertation aims to examine in detail part of this largely unexplored but very important area of Thucydidean reception. The works that I study in this dissertation represent, therefore, the first evidence for a systematic commentary and teaching tradition in the Latin West on Thucydides since antiquity. In this examination we face the obvious conundrum of devout religious reformers dealing with one of the most blatantly atheistic writers in antiquity, yet we find Melanchthon and his proteges willingly projecting themselves onto Thucydides’ text. At certain points also these writers eagerly compare the fragmented society of Greek cities in the Peloponnesian War to an analogous world in Protestant Germany. It is impressive, moreover, to realize that these early commentaries arose from such a closely connected community of scholars. All three scholars, however, ultimately approach Thucydides differently. Melanchthon primarily understands Thucydides as an historian of societal collapse, one mirroring the disintegrating – indeed, apocalyptic – world that he saw around him in Europe. Camerarius’ commentary avoids any such moralizing and gives a philological and stylistic commentary that serves as an introduction for students to the idiosyncrasies of Thucydidean Greek. Winsemius’ commentary, while clearly taking a considerable amount of material from Melanchthon, acts predominantly as a rhetorical commentary. Taken together, the analysis of these lectures, commentaries, and translations gives a snapshot of the status of Thucydidean scholarship both at its beginning in early modern Western Europe and in the dynamic and disruptive context of the early Protestant Reformation
Frank Coulson, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Anthony Kaldellis, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
240 p.
Classical Studies; European History
classics; classical reception; protestant reformation; humanism; Thucydides; Melanchthon; Renaissance; Camerarius; Winsemius; Chytraeus

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Citations

  • Richards, J. (2013). Thucydides in the Circle of Philip Melanchthon [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376788422

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Richards, John. Thucydides in the Circle of Philip Melanchthon. 2013. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376788422.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Richards, John. "Thucydides in the Circle of Philip Melanchthon." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376788422

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1376788422
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.