Latin Instruction in the Schools of Transylvania from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

HAPPY the Greeks who were not obliged to learn other languages and thus could devote their time to the arts and philosophy, happy also the cultured Romans who learned Greek through their frequent associations with erudite men from Hellas! We, however, we people of the modern era must sacrifice a considerable part of our youth to the study of the ancient languages in order to find the gate which then opens up the thorny path to philosophy, constantly harassed by obstructions and barred by locks and bolts. Truly a sad lot deserving incessant lament! Yet the situation cannot be altered. Reflections such as these have been repeatedly voiced from the sixteenth century to the present day in treatises and orations entitled Ratio studendi, Ratio discendi, De studiis litterarum (non deserendis), as well as in the innumerable humanistic eulogies, disputations, prize-winning essays, and oratorical contests dealing with various academic disciplines. There is no reason for us to disbelieve the frequent direct and indirect references in school declamations and allocations, in leges academicae and in the doleful stories labelled De miseriis paedagogorum, to more or less rampant indifference and antagonism to the study of the ancient languages, and for that matter also of philosophy and mathematics, in universities and schools of the early modern era outside Italy. It is a situation which was to reach a crucial point during the eighteenth century with the advent of public enlightenment and the increasing emphasis on the study of the vernacular, the natural sciences, and national history. In the light of developments in the history of classical education up to the early nineteenth century it is very instructive, as well as fascinating, to glance at school regulations since the time of the Reformation. True, schools were regulated before this great historical event,1 but it was really not until Philip Melanchthon, the eminent Praeceptor Germaniae, began his untiring endeavours on behalf of higher instruction that an avalanche of Schulordnungen descended upon the educational world. As an illustration of the varied destinies of Latin I have chosen the regulations of Transylvania.2 This region (German: Siebenbiirgen;