Commonplace books in seventeenth-century Sweden

Abstract

This chapter deals with commonplace books which were employed in the teaching of Latin grammar and composition, in argument and religious and moral exhortation, and served as repertoires of information for academic disciplines. The title pages of commonplace books often mention that in these volumes ancient literature and philosophy are digested into commonplaces for the benefit of students of a particular educational institution. In Sweden, which then included Finland, the seventeenth century was a time when Latin poetry and literature flourished. A couple of examples as representatives of different types of collection works published in Sweden in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is presented, and some of their various functions are also illustrated. Collections of sentences, such as Aureae sententiae published in Turku, the old capital of Finland, in 1671, were employed as medium of elementary instruction, introducing schoolboys to Latin before they began to read Latin authors. Keywords:collection; commonplace books; Latin; quotations; sentences; seventeenth-century; students; Sweden