Best Dodge Ever, or How to Pretend That It Doesn't Matter If You Don't Actually Read the Book

"[Mombaer's book] is divided into titles, or articles.  The first one is called 'Eruditiorium Exercitiorum', or 'Of the more learned (advanced) exercises,' and covers six folios in the Zwolle edition of 1494.  It is divided into several sub-divisions, which deal with a great multitude of subjects, having little connection with each other.  It seems like a vast jungle of nouns and verbs, suggestive of purity, fervor, moderation, advice, congruity; dignity, doing, commanding, giving, promising, enemies, judgment, example, writing, evil, sin, pride, order, place, time, etc.  Probably this first title or article is intended as a sort of introduction, or survey."

--Albert Hyma, The Christian Renaissance: A History of the “Devotio Moderna” (New York and London: The Century Co., 1925), p. 258.

Comments

  1. Brian W. OgilvieJuly 23, 2011 at 3:54 PM

    Nice catch! I much prefer the honest approach of Eric Cochrane, who noted in the preface to his Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance that he had learned how to skim humanist histories without reading them word for word.

    ReplyDelete

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