Carolus Maneken or Carolus Virulus (or any of the spelling variations of the name, including Karel and Karolus for Carolus, Menneken, Mennicken or Meniken for Maneken, and Viruli for Virulus) (1419?-1493) was a professor at the
Leuven University
KU Leuven (or Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research university in the city of Leuven, Belgium. It conducts teaching, research, and services in computer science, engineering, natural sciences, theology, humanities, medicine, l ...
and the author of the ''Formulae Epistularum''.
Carolus Maneken was born circa 1419 in either
Ghent or
Kassel
Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...
. He studied in Leuven, and was from 1437 until his death in 1493 the first director of the "Collège du Lys" or
Paedagogium Lilii, one of the four colleges of the Arts Faculty.
The ''Formulae Epistolarum'', also known as ''Epistule Caroli'', was a book first published in 1476 by
Johann Veldener Johann Veldener (born in Würzburg, died in Leuven between 1486 and 1496), also known as Jan Veldener or Johan Veldenaer; was an early printer in Flanders. He worked as a punchcutter and printer in Cologne, together with William Caxton, who may h ...
in Leuven, and reprinted dozens of times over the next few decades. It contained example letters in Latin for many occasions, and was based on the classic examples of
Cicero's ''Epistolae ad familiares'' and the contemporary work by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, later known as
Pope Pius II, which was also published in Louvain by the same publisher. The last known edition dates from 1520. In 1503, the German humanist
Heinrich Bebel attacked Maneken's by then outdated work in his ''Commentarium epistolarum conficiendarum
..contra epistolas Caroli''. Later, the same is done by
Desiderius Erasmus in ''De conscribendis epistolis''. Spanish humanist
Juan Luis Vives also discussed Maneken and his work in his 1531 book ''De tradendis disciplinis''.
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Maneken, Carolus
1419 births
1493 deaths
Flemish Renaissance humanists
Academic staff of the Old University of Leuven
French male non-fiction writers