John of Genoa or Johannes Balbus (died c. 1298) was an Italian

grammarian Grammarian may refer to: * Alexandrine grammarians, philologists and textual scholars in Hellenistic Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE * Biblical grammarians, scholars who study the Bible and the Hebrew language * Grammarian (Greco-Roman ...

and Dominican priest. At an advanced age, John gave away his wealth to the poor of

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...

and entered the Order of St Dominic. He is best known for his

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

grammar, ''Summa Grammaticalis'', better known as the '' Catholicon'', apparently the first Latin lexicographical work "to achieve complete alphabetization (from the first to the last letter of each word)."Hans Sauer in A.P. Cowie (ed.), ''The Oxford History of English Lexicography'' (Oxford UP, 2009), pp. 30-31. This work is made up of treatises on

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

etymology Etymology () The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words ...

, grammar, prosody, rhetoric, and an etymological dictionary of the Latin language (''primae, mediae et infimae Latinitatis''). It was highly respected as a textbook for over a century after its publication, and received both excessive criticism and excessive praise.

Erasmus Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' w ...

was particularly critical of the work, criticizing it in his works ''De Ratione Studiorum'' and ''Colloquia''.

Leandro Alberti Leandro Alberti (1479–1552) was an Italian Dominican historian. Life Alberti was born and died at Bologna. In his early youth he attracted the attention of the Bolognese rhetorician, Giovanni Garzoni, who volunteered to act as his tutor. He e ...

wrote a defense of the ''Catholicon'' in response to these attacks.

Peter Schöffer Peter Schöffer or Petrus Schoeffer (c. 1425 – c. 1503) was an early German printer, who studied in Paris and worked as a manuscript copyist in 1451 before apprenticing with Johannes Gutenberg and joining Johann Fust, a goldsmith, lawyer, and m ...

and

Johann Fust Johann Fust or Faust (c. 1400 – October 30, 1466) was an early German printer. Family background Fust was born to burgher family of Mainz, traceable back to the early thirteenth century. Members of the family held many civil and religi ...

published the ''Catholicon'' in 1450, and it was several times republished. Besides the ''Catholicon'', John also wrote ''Liber Theologiae qui vocatur Dialogus de Quaestionibus Animae ad Spiritum'' and ''Quoddam opus ad inveniendum festa mobilia''. A ''Postilla super Joannem'' and a ''Tractatus de Omnipotentia Dei'' have also been attributed to him.

References

* Alessandro Pratesi,
BALBI, Giovanni (Iohannes Balbus, de Balbis, de Ianua)
�. In: ''

Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani The ''Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani'' ( en, Biographical Dictionary of the Italians) is a biographical dictionary published by the Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, started in 1925 and completed in 2020. It includes about 40,000 biograp ...

'', Volume 5, Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1963 {{Authority control 1298 deaths 13th-century Genoese people 13th-century Latin writers 13th-century Italian writers 13th-century Italian Roman Catholic priests 13th-century linguists Italian Dominicans Grammarians of Latin Grammarians from Italy Medieval linguists Italian lexicographers Year of birth unknown