Talk:Catholicon (1286)

[Untitled]

Does anyone know anything about this text whose primary interest ISN'T print?

Gutenberg printed the Catholicon in 1460, and the Bible around 1455. So it was not printed before the Bible.

And also not by Gutenberg, almost certainly. I fixed. Dicklyon 21:07, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that this article, as it stands, is very weak; it is misleading in certain important areas, makes what is probably at least one outright (if minor) error, and, as has already been remarked, is disproportionately concerned with the importance of the work in the history of printing.

Is it true that John of Genoa was a Dominican, but not (it seems) until quite late in his life, and probably not at the time the Catholicon was composed.

More importantly, the article ascribes to the work a religious character that it does not really possess. Catholicon is here just a generic name for a class of reference-book, with no particular connection to the Ecclesia Catholica Romae; it is a work on the Latin tongue, and is no more religious in character than any work in that religious time and place naturally would be.

One Victor O'Daniel, writing in the old Catholic Encyclopedia, describes the Catholicon thus (in an article on John of Genoa):

    The work comprises treatises on orthography, etymology, grammar, prosody,
    rhetoric, and an etymological dictionary of the Latin language (primae,
    mediae et infimae Latinitatis). The great number of manuscripts in which
    the Catholicon still exists, and the numerous editions through which it
    passed during the first seventy-five years after the invention of printing,
    attest the wide acceptance accorded it and the popularity it long enjoyed.
    For more than a century it was highly esteemed as a textbook. It has been
    the subject at once of excessive criticism and excessive praise. Erasmus,
    the most conspicuous of its critics, speaks of it in caustic terms in his
    De Ratione Studiorum and Colloquia. Leander Alberti (Viri Illustres Ord.
    Praed. and Discrittione di tutta Italia) defends it against the aspersions
    of the humanist. If we bear in mind the materials the author had at his
    disposal, the purpose of the work, and the needs of the time, it must be
    conceded that the Catholicon possessed considerable merit. That it met
    the demands of the age is attested by its popularity.

In my opinion we would do well to incorporate this almost verbatim-- it is in the public domain-- and follow it with the matter on printing, perhaps in a separate section.

Mjhrynick (talk) 19:49, 27 December 2008 (UTC)