Lexique de la prose latine de la renaissance.

As every Neo-Latinist knows, the vocabulary of Latin underwent a great expansion during the Renaissance. The coining of new words was especially necessary for those who wrote about printing, seafaring, warfare, and scientific matters, but the use of Latin words unattested in Antiquity or even the Middle Ages is also common in Neo-Latin texts concerned with less technical matters. Students of Neo-Latin, however, are hampered by a lack of lexicographical and other scholarly aids dealing with Renaissance Latin vocabulary. Dictionaries of medieval Latin sometimes include words which are first attested in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Neo-Latin wordlists exist, such as the annual instrumentum lexicographicum published in Humanistica Lovaniensia. But Rene Hoven's Lexique de la prose latine de la renaissance is the first modern dictionary entirely devoted to Renaissance Latin.

Hoven's lexicon draws upon an impressive variety of genres and subjects, such as history, law, philosophy, theology, the natural sciences, and Latin translations of Greek texts, but it is not comprehensive, nor is it intended to be. It is restricted entirely to prose, and is based on 150 selected authors from Petrarch to Justus Lipsius (ob. 1606). Although Hoven often examined whole works, in the case of some of these authors his investigations were restricted to selections found in anthologies and other collections (viii).

Hoven has designed his Lexique to serve as a supplement to F. Gaffiot's Dictionnaire latin-francais, which is undoubtedly the standard French lexicon of ancient Latinity in use today. In this respect, Hoven's policy accords with the approach adopted in modern dictionaries of medieval Latin, which for the most part concentrate on words and meanings not attested in the principal lexica of ancient Latin, such as Lewis and Short or Forcellini.

The layout of Hoven's Lexique is simple and clear. Each notice contains one to three references for each meaning. Where needed, the author adds brief quotations and other remarks pertaining to the origin or use of the word. He employs the abbreviation "freq." (frequent), if he found ten or more instances of a word coming from at least five authors. Hoven's Lexique includes approximately 7100 words not mentioned by Gaffiot, and about 1400 words that appear in Gaffiot, but are used by Renaissance authors with meanings unattested in Gaffiot. Words belonging to this latter category are preceded by a small cross. Hoven adds asterisks to words found earlier than the Renaissance: three asterisks denote "latin classique," or the period up to about 200 A.D. (the approximate temporal limit of the Oxford Latin Dictionary); two asterisks mean "latin tardif," or Latin written between about 200 and 600 A.D.; a single asterisk signifies "latin medieval." The author is rightly flexible about the temporal boundary between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He uses Petrarch as the starting point for humanistic prose, and the writers he considers humanistic are almost all Italian up to the mid-fifteenth century. After this period his geographic parameters for humanistic Latin expand, and they include all of western and central Europe in the sixteenth century (viii). This temporal division is reasonable and enjoys fairly wide acceptance, even if some classicists are accustomed to distinguish classical Latin prose in the strictest sense, which denotes the period of Cicero and Caesar, from the first two centuries A.D., which is often labelled "post-Augustan," "post-classical" or "the Silver Age."

At the end of Hoven's Lexique, the reader will find a series of word lists including "mots d'origine non-latine," "diminutifs," and "mots classes d'apres divers suffixes ou terminaisons." The last two categories in particular could serve as a starting point for a study of techniques of word coinage in humanistic Latin.

No one could expect a single scholar to have inspected the totality of Latin prose which survives from the period covered by this dictionary. Hence a great deal of selection was obviously necessary, and no selection process of this sort could entirely avoid subjectivity. Nevertheless, many will be surprised at the omissions and even some of the inclusions in the list of authors surveyed (xiv-xxviii). The Italian humanists are insufficiently represented. Conspicuously missing are such names as Francesco Barbaro, Bembo, Biondo, Filelfo, Perotti and other authors of similar stature. Perhaps the most regrettable omission is Pontano, several of whose works have appeared in critical editions in the last two decades, and whose vocabulary is especially rich and inventive. Yet we find included, for example, Antoine Arlier, whose importance in the history of Neo-Latin prose can hardly be considered equal to that of the writers mentioned above.

Unfortunately, Hoven has not followed a consistent policy in regard to the editions which he has consulted. Sometimes he employs the latest editions (of Erasmus and Vives, for example), but some authors, including several important ones, do not receive the same attention. For instance, Hoven cites the anastatic reprints of sixteenth century editions contained in the 1962 Opera omnia of Lorenzo Valla, despite the fact that many of the works in this collection have been republished in more critical editions since 1970. As we might expect, this sometimes has detrimental results. For example, as the sole source for the adjective viridaceus (defined in the Lexique as "verdatre"), Hoven has used the ancient edition of Valla's Dialectica contained in the Opera omnia (I, 689, 11). In the 1982 edition of the same work by G. Zippel, entitled Laurentii Valle repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, we find that the correct reading is violaceus (Zippel, 1:161, line 21).

Another area in which Lexique de la prose latine de la renaissance falls short of its potential is the question of medieval Latin vocabulary retained by the humanists. The persistence of medieval Latinity in the Renaissance, and even in writings of the humanists themselves, has been noted by several scholars, including Jozef Ijsewijn and Silvia Rizzo. Lexique de la prose latine de la renaissance offers a new perspective on this, since Hoven employs the single asterisk to denote "latin medieval" about 1600 times. Such a substantial survival of medieval vocabulary in a variety of humanistic texts is particularly significant, and Hoven rightly suggests that the phenomenon deserves further study (xi). Yet, in order to determine which words are medieval, Hoven relied on only five modern lexica of medieval Latin, despite the fact that many others exist, which are either complete or in progress. Among the lexica apparently not consulted by Hoven are such works as F. Arnaldi, Latinitatis italicae medii aevi inde ab anno CDLXXVI usque ad annum MXXII lexicon imperfectum (1939+, rpt. 1970); R. Latham/D. Howlett, Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (1975+); Mittellateinisches Worterbuch (1967+); M. Plezia, Lexicon mediae et infimae latinitatis Polonorum (1975-77), to name only a few. Had Hoven employed all the lexicographical resources available to check each word, he would have discovered that the percentage of medieval Latin words is considerably larger than he suggests. To verify this, I checked all the words in Hoven's Lexique which lack an asterisk (and are therefore to be presumed Neo-Latin) from a to amplexator, using only one of the medieval Latin lexica not cited by Hoven, the Mittellateinisches Worterbuch. Even from this limited search it emerges that the following words in the first eighteen pages of Lexique should have been designated "latin medieval" with the single asterisk: abbaticus (11th cent.), acanthia (the Grecizing form acanthias is attested in the 13th cent.), acclamatorius (9th cent.), acetositas (11th cent.), acuitas (13th cent.), aculeosus (12th cent.), adfirmativa (affirmativa; 12th cent.), adfluxus (aff-; 13th cent.), adgregatim (agg-; 9th cent.), adminiculatrix (10th cent.), administratix (9th cent.), admussito (11th cent.), adsentatorius (ass-; 11th cent.); adseverator (ass-; 9th cent.), adsiduatio (ass-; 13th cent.), adsociatio (ass-; 12th cent.), adultere (10th cent.), aedificatoria (13th cent.), aequipendium (9th cent.), agibilis (13th cent.), alembicum (12th cent.), ambra (12th cent.), amorosus (="lovable"; 13th cent.), amplexabilis (9th cent.), amplexator (12th cent.).

In summary, this work deserved to be published and will certainly be useful, since it includes many words not defined in any other lexicon, and its author brings to bear an impressive knowledge of humanistic Latin and Renaissance culture. Nevertheless, we cannot fail to observe how its utility could have been enhanced and some of its shortcomings avoided.

Terence O. Tunberg UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY