![Kiliaan2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Kiliaan2.jpg)
Cornelis Kiliaan (1528,
Duffel
Duffel () is a municipality in the Belgian province of Antwerp.
The municipality comprises only the town of Duffel proper. On 1 January 2020, Duffel had a total population of 17,664. The total area is 22.71 km² which gives a population dens ...
– 1607,
Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504, ), was a 16th-century lexicographer, linguist, translator and poet of the Southern Netherlands.
Biography
He was born in Duffel between 1528 and 1530. His parents, Anna and Hendrick van Kiele Rechtstraets, were wealthy citizens of Duffel. His father died when he was still a child.
In 1548, he went to study Latin, Greek and Hebrew at University of Louvain, where he later taught law. After his studies, he found a job in the printshop recently founded by
Christophe Plantin
Christophe Plantin ( nl, Christoffel Plantijn; – 1 July 1589) was a French Renaissance humanist and book printer and publisher who resided and worked in Antwerp.
Life
Plantin was born in France, probably in Saint-Avertin, near the city of ...
, which grew to become the largest in Europe of that period. He started at the bottom as a typographer and printer, but he was promoted to first assistant in 1558. Plantin was clearly confident in the quality of Kiliaan because in 1565, he was appointed proofreader, a function reserved for scholars. Perhaps it helped that after his mother died in 1564, the whole of the family wealth passed into Kiliaan's hands, leaving him free of financial worries and allowing him to pursue his studies on language and the Bible. During his print career he worked on several translations, even translating documents seized from the Spanish enemy for the local authorities during the
Dutch Revolt
The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt ( nl, Nederlandse Opstand) (Historiography of the Eighty Years' War#Name and periodisation, c.1566/1568–1648) was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and t ...
. In 1574 he published a Dutch-Latin dictionary ''Dictionarium Teutonico-Latinum'', with 12,000 entries, which was innovative because he indicated forms close to other related languages. He was thus the first in Europe to implement linguistic comparison. In 1588, Kiliaan completed a second edition of his dictionary that was almost three times as large. This time he used not only other dictionaries as a source, but also delved into other published works. Another novelty is that he indicated a number of words in the region in which they were used. Finally, in 1599 he published his magnum opus, the etymology. This book is mentioned as one of the 1000 most important texts of the Dutch language in the
Canon of Dutch Literature
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western can ...
.
At age 50, he married Maria Bosmans who gave him three daughters: Catharina, Maria and Anna. In 1604, he resigned from the Plantin printshop due to illness. He died 15 April 1607 and was buried at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp.
Works
![Cornelis Kiliaan01](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Cornelis_Kiliaan01.jpg)
*Collaboration on the
Plantin Polyglot
The Plantin Polyglot (also called the ''Antwerp Polyglot'', the ''Biblia Regia'' or "King's Bible") is a polyglot Bible, printed under the title ''Biblia Polyglotta'' by Christopher Plantin in Antwerp (Belgium) between 1568 and 1573.
Plantin was ...
, 1573
*''Dictionarium Teutonico-Latinum'', 1574 (becoming Etymologicum with the 1599 3rd edition)
*''Icones Illustrium Feminarum Veteris Testamenti'', 1595 (The Celebrated Women of the Old Testament)
References
author pagein the DBNL
website with biographyand photos of portrait and dictionary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kiliaan, Cornelis
1528 births
1607 deaths
Flemish printers
Flemish poets
Flemish writers (before 1830)
People from Duffel
Flemish historians