Standbeeld van Johannes Despauterius, Ninove, Aug2021

Jan de Spauter (

Ninove Ninove () is a city and municipality located in the Flemish province of East Flanders in Belgium. It is situated on the river Dender, and is part of the Denderstreek. The municipality comprises the city of Ninove proper and since the 1976 merger ...

, c. 1480 –

Komen Komen (, it, Comen or ''Comeno'') is a settlement in Slovenia. It is the seat of the Municipality of Komen. It is located on the Karst Plateau in the Slovenian Littoral. Name Komen was attested in written sources in 1247 as ''Cominum'' (and ...

, 1520) was a prominent

Flemish Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "human ...

. His name was Latinized to Johannes Despauterius as was common in the Middle Ages.

Life

At the age of 18 Despauterius went to the humanistic college ''De Lelie'' in Leuven where he studied for three years. In Leuven he became a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Th ...

: which meant he had studied and mastered

Latin grammar Latin is a heavily inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for number and case; pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, case, and gender; and verbs are inflected for person, ...

, rhetorica, dialectica,

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

a, arithmica, geometrica and astronomica. After his studies he started teaching.

Works

After several years of teaching experience, Despauterius published books on Latin grammar (''Syntaxis'', ''Ars versificatoria'', ''Grammatica pars prima'' and ''Ortographia''). They became the standard works of reference for the study of Latin for the following centuries in Western Europe.

Legacy

At the end of the 17th century, James Kirkwood was asked what he thought of the Latin grammar of Despauter. He replied that if some defects were remedied, it could be made excellent. He was commissioned to make a revision, which appeared as ''Grammatica Despauteriana'' in 1695, followed by several later editions.

Thomas Ruddiman Thomas Ruddiman (October 167419 January 1757) was a Scottish classical scholar. Life He was born on a farm near Boyndie, three miles from Banff in Banffshire, where his father was a farmer. He was educated locally, then studied at the Univer ...

's grammar of 1714 is considered to have superseded it.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Despauterius, Johannes 1480s births 1520 deaths 16th-century Latin-language writers Flemish Renaissance humanists Historical linguists