University of Virginia Library

THE Grammaticæ Artis Institutio of Joannes Susenbrotus: A Bibliographical Note
by
Joseph X. Brennan

In spite of the growing recognition of the important contribution of Joannes Susenbrotus (1485/6-1542)[1] to 16th-century learning,[2] the bibliographical information concerning his publications is still extremely scant and very much confused. Most confused of all is the publication history of his Grammaticœ Artis Institutio, a Latin grammar widely used and distributed in its day. As Susenbrotus relates in the dedicatory epistle to the first and second revisions of this work, he had begun many years earlier a haphazard compilation of material from the grammars of Priscian, Diomedes and others; this compendium he then began to teach and dictate to his students.[3] After some fifteen years of such experimentation, he finally submitted the compendium for publication.

The first edition and the original version of the Grammaticœ Artis Institutio, which survives today in only a few copies, reads on the title-page as follows:[4] "Grammaticae Artis Institutio per Joannem Susenbrotum, Ravenspurgi ludimagistrum ex Grammaticorum Coryphæis accurate concinnata." No date or place of publication appears on the title-page, but the date of this edition is accurately fixed on fol. 88r, where the section on syntax ends with the notation, "Valete Ravenspurgi. Kal. Jan. An. M.D. XXXV" (January 1, 1535). Of this first printed version of the grammar there was

apparently only the one edition. Although the book is without imprint, a preliminary study of the type indicates that it was very probably printed by Christopher Froschauer of Zürich, the publisher of both later revisions of the Grammaticœ, as well as two other textbooks compiled by Susenbrotus.[5]

In the first revision of this grammar—considerably expanded and heavily indebted in both form and content to the grammar of the English humanist, Thomas Linacre[6] —the title is also considerably extended: "Grammaticae Artis Institutio per Joannem Susenbrotum Ravenspurgi ludimagistrum ex Grammaticorum Coryphæis iam denuo accurate concinnata, à mendis item repurgata, ac multis etiam in locis citra Lectoris fastidiu locùpletata." No date appears on the title-page of this revised edition either, but the dedicatory epistle closes with a misprinted date which has frequently misled those who have had to deal with it: "Vale optima indole adolescens, Rauěspurgi octavo Kalědas Iulij. Anno à Christi seruatoris nostri natali 1518. Aetatis meæ anno 54" (fol. 6r). The year of this volume's appearance, however, we can determine quite accurately by comparing certain of its statements with those found in other Susenbrotus publications. In the dedication, for example, Susenbrotus stated that he was then in his 54th year; since we know from the Epitome Troporum ac Schematum that he was in his 56th year on March 5, 1541, and from the Methodus octo partium orationis that he was in his 57th year on July 31, 1542,[7] it is clear that Susenbrotus must have completed the dedication to the first recension of the Grammaticœ on June 24 ("octauo Kalědas Iulij") of 1539, in order to have been in his 54th year at the time.

This date can be confirmed further by a collation of information, respecting Susenbrotus' years of service as a teacher, which appears in all of his texts. In the last paragraph of the 1535 edition of the Grammaticœ, first of all, Susenbrotus stated that he had already endured the trials and tribulations of the classroom for 28 years ("ipse qui duo de triginta iam annos, phrontisterii sordes, molestias, ac curas pertuli"); in the first revision of this grammar the figure is changed to 32: "Ego ipse, qui duos & triginta iam annos, etc." The introduction to the Epitome (1541), moreover, states that

he was then in the 35th year of his "scholastic administration"; and the dedicatory epistle of the Methodus (1542) indicates that he was in the 36th year of his "scholastic function." It should be noted here that the figures which appear in the grammar, "duo de triginta" and "duo & triginta," were reckoned in terms of years already completed ("iam . . . pertuli"), whereas the figures in the Epitome and Methodus include the year already in progress. We know from the dedicatory epistle found in both revisions of the Grammaticœ, furthermore, that Susenbrotus had begun his teaching career in 1506 ("anno minoris numeri sexto")—a career which was interrupted for a year in 1521-1522, while he studied for his M. A. at the University of Basel.[8] However improbable such an error, all the evidence nevertheless points unequivocally to the fact that 1518 was a misprint for 1539. On the title-page of this second version of the text, finally, appears the characteristic device of Christopher Froschauer, a willow (?) tree with a number of frogs (Frosch, in German) below.

By some strange oversight, the misprint of 1518 for 1539 was left uncorrected in the second revised form, also, even though the author assures us on the title-page of this third version of the text that he had not only added notations in the margin but made useful corrections in the text as well: "Grammaticae Artis Institutio per Joannem Susenbrotum Rauenspurgi ludimagistrum ex Grammaticorum Coryphaeis iam tertium recognita, additis et in contextu et in margine haud aspernandis." In the interval between the publication of the first and second revised texts, Susenbrotus certainly detected or had brought to his attention the gross misprint in his introduction, but why it was allowed to remain or how it could possibly have been overlooked a second time remains a mystery. The date of the first publication of the third version of the Grammaticœ we can establish as definitely later than September 1, 1540, and perhaps before November 21 of the same year, by means of the marginal commentary concerning his home town, Wangen im Allgäu, mentioned in the text (40v-41r):[9] "Anno 1539 2. Septemb. inter octavam & novam ante meridium a latrone ac incendiario crudelissimo totum fere Vulcano dicatum est, qui sequente anno in monasterio Marchtal ad Danubium sito meritas luit poemas." Matters are somewhat complicated here by the additional misprint of 1530 for 1539 in both the University of Chicago and University of Illinois copies; in another edition of this recension, however, the year is given as 1539,[10] the date

which is verified in contemporary records.[11] From these records we learn that the culprit who set fire to the city was indeed apprehended at Marchtal on September 1, 1540, and executed soon thereafter. From the same source we are also informed that on November 21, 1540, Wangen suffered from an equally disastrous fire which destroyed whatever had escaped the conflagration of the year before.[12] It seems likely, therefore, that had Susenbrotus written this marginal note after the date of the second burning, that fact too would have been noted in some way. It is rather unlikely, in any event, that this final form of the text was prepared later than 1540, since in the year and a half before his death in 1542 Susenbrotus was furiously busy with other matters; in this short space of time, in addition to performing his many duties as schoolmaster, he edited with scholia and other information the Scholae Christianae Epigrammatum Libri duo (1541), compiled the Epitome Troporum ac Schematum (1541), and composed both a Methodus octo partium orationis (1542) and a combined Latin and Greek grammar, which had been prepared for publication before his death but was never printed.[13]

Of this third form of the text of the Grammaticœ Artis Institutio there were at least two undated and five dated editions.[14] Of the two undated editions, that which carries the correct date 1539 in the margin of fol. 40v is undoubtedly the earlier and very probably the first edition, sometime late in 1540. Since another Zürich edition of this recension was dated 1544, it is most likely that the second of the undated editions appeared sometime between these two dates, 1540 and 1544. Thereafter the Grammaticœ was reprinted at Lyons in 1556[15] and at Zürich in 1558 and 1565. There is record also of a final edition in 1570, presumably at Zürich by Froschauer, who issued another of the many editions of Susenbrotus' Epitome in this same year. All told, then, there were three distinct versions of the Grammaticœ Artis Institutio in the lifetime of Susenbrotus: the first in 1535, the second in 1539, and the third most probably in late 1540 or early 1541 at the latest. From information that is by no means complete, moreover, it is fairly certain that of this third form there were at least seven different editions between 1540 and 1570.

Notes