the Reformation movement, his advice was frequently sought by leading men in the economic and scholarly circles of Leipzig in the 16th century. Camerarius’ biography should be treated with respect to that perfect balance between Humanistic teaching and protestant liberalistic views of reorganizing Humanistic discussions about religion and knowledge.6 After being sent as deputy for Nuremberg to the diet of Augsburg, where he helped MelanchthonMelanchthon, Philipp in drawing up the Augsburg Confession, he was commissioned by Duke Ulrich of WürttembergUlrich (Herzog von Württemberg) in 1535 to reorganize the university of Tübingen and raise the quality of education there, while avoiding the mainstream of the controversies swirling around Württemberg between Reformed and Lutheran fractions, since he was not a major Protestant dogmatician7; in 1541 he rendered a similar service at Leipzig,8 where the remainder of his life was chiefly spent.9 Camerarius was a close friend and student of MelanchthonMelanchthon, Philipp,10 and was in contact at various times with the circle of classical scholars that included Conrad Mutianus RufusMutianus Rufus, Konrad, Crotus RuveanusRubeanus, Crotus, and Eobanus HessusHessus, Helius Eobanus.11Humelius, Johannes He also maintained a sporadic epistolary friendship with Desiderius ErasmusErasmus von Rotterdam, Desiderius after their meeting in Basel in the summer of 1524,12 but this friendship seems to have been strained but not broken by a conflict between the two in 1535 stemming from a letter (now lost) that ErasmusErasmus von Rotterdam, Desiderius wrote to Eobanus HessusHessus, Helius Eobanus in which he severely criticized Camerarius’ editions of the works of Greek astrologers.13 He produced the first printed Greek edition of Ptolemy’s astrology text, the TetrabiblosPtolemaeus, ClaudiusTetrabiblos, in 1535. It was printed in a quarto format by the publisher FrobenFroben, Johann at Nuremberg along with Camerarius’ translation to Latin of Books I, II and portions of Books III and IV, accompanied with his notes on the first two books, the Greek text of the Centiloquium (Καρπός) and a Latin translation from Iovianus PontanusPontano, Giovanni. An avid believer in astrology, he followed it with a second edition of the TetrabiblosPtolemaeus, ClaudiusTetrabiblos in Greek in 1553, with an accompanying Latin translation by MelanchthonMelanchthon, Philipp and the Centiloquium (Καρπός) in Latin and Greek. This was printed in Basel, Switzerland in octavo format by Johannes OporinusOporinus, Johannes. During his lifetime Camerarius published widely on a range of subjects, including editions of HomerHomer, SophoclesSophokles, CiceroCicero, and PlautusPlautus; a recent estimate of his output puts the number of books published under his name at “at least 183”, not including minor revisions of works and reprintings.14 He bequeathed his pupils the seal of scholarship and his contemporaries admired his manifold Humanistic activities. For example, the French eminent scholar Adrianus TurnebusTurnebus, Adrianus (1512–1565) seems to have thought highly of Camerarius and their correspondence is an attested evidence of scholarly intercourse between France and Germany; adjusting to StählinStählin, Friedrich’s observation that the progressive influence of the new scholarship in France upon scholarship in Germany and in other countries was a decisive fact. Rudolf Pfeiffer extended this observation by presenting two exemplary cases about MelanchthonMelanchthon, Philipp’s pupils and friends, and more specifically those of Camerarius and of Hieronymus WolfWolf, Hieronymus,15 both teachers of distinction and heads of the newly founded Protestant schools in Nuremberg and Augsburg respectively; both scholars superior to MelanchthonMelanchthon, Philipp, and both great editors. Surprisingly the histories of classical scholarship do not provide the readers with a certain evaluation of Camerarius’ philological greatness: Wilamowitz mentions Camerarius’ friendship with MelanchthonMelanchthon, Philipp,16 Conrad Bursian Camerarius’ major works and John Edwin Sandys offers a short cv along with the mentioning of Camerarius’ major works.17 But Camerarius was the most important German philologist of the 16th century. His first editions are still important today, as are his editions based on manuscript material much improved in comparison to others’ earlier attempts. His editio princeps of Ptolemy’s QuadripartitumCamerarius d.Ä., JoachimPtolemaei Quadripartitum (Nuremberg 1535) and the Μεγάλη σύνταξις, the Almagest (Basel 1538) are still essential, appearing in modern editions with the abbreviation ‘c’. Camerarius possessed a very wide knowledge of the ancient world, akin to the learned encyclopedism of the 17th century, but still more cultured and sympathetically humane. All his extant manuscripts and letters, the “Cameriana”, are located in the Bavarian State Library.
In school education Camerarius recommends that classical literature should be used as a warning example by which pupils can learn a proper method of translation. Just as many early Humanists despised the ad verbum method and execrated the version of Leontius PilatusPilato, Leonzio, a persistent strain in Humanism continued to look askance at versiones composed on the ad verbum principle. On their first printing in 1537, the versions of Divus had been immediately criticised by Camerarius, in the preface to his own explication of the first book of the IliadHomerIl., published in 1538, to which he appended a translation in Latin hexameters (Commentarius Explicationis primi libri Iliados HomeriCamerarius d.Ä., JoachimCommentarius explicationis primi libri Iliados Homeri, loachimi Camerarii […] Eiusdem libri primi Iliados conversio in Latinos versus, eodem auctore etc., Argentorati 1538). Even if the translator coins good Latin words, Camerarius disapproves of diverging from the laws of Latin syntax and grammar. The ad verbum versions corrupt both the matter and manner of the original as well as obscuring and degrading them and so should be avoided.18 Camerarius’ acumen enabled him to induce further discussion concerning the authorship of ancient poetry with the blend of poetry. For example, an examination of the Lament for Adonis’ linguistic and prosodic signals, as well as what might be called its conscious signals, provides ample evidence to uphold Joachim Camerarius’ original hypothesis of 1530 that Bion of SmyrnaBion von Smyrna authored the poem.19 After all, Camerarius exerted his wonderful erudition almost in every aspect of philological curriculum, from orthography20Camerarius d.Ä., JoachimDe orthographia to interpretation; the latter setting his major contribution to encompassing philology with Christian morality. Should the history of interpretation be envisioned as intellectual history, about the ways in which ancient texts were interpreted and discussed in Reformation Europe and under sober theological consideration or liberal theology, and the prominent role such ancient texts and the debates on them played in the intellectual history of Europe, Camerarius’ contribution could be conceived within this very frame of intimate personal scholarship. Therefore, we may ascribe the commentary method the Dutch Humanist and jurist Hugo GrotiusGrotius, HugoAnnotationes in Libros Evangeliorum (1583–1645) applied in his Annotationes in Libros Evangeliorum (Amsterdam 1641) to Camerarius’ Commentarius in Novum FoedusCamerarius d.Ä., JoachimCommentarius in Novum Foedus which was published at first in 1572, thus continuing FlaciusFlacius Illyricus, Matthias’ grammatical approach.21 In this work, Camerarius argued that the writings of the New Testament must be interpreted from the perspective of its authors and within the understanding of their world; otherwise, it would be impossible to grasp the meaning of the text as each New Testament writer intended it. By insisting on the knowledge of the context of the Biblical authors and not the opinions of early Church Fathers, as providing the key for interpreting the New Testament, Camerarius founded the historical-critical method22 to interpreting the Bible for modern Protestant commentaries.
His sense about textual sources as resources of interpretation drove him to write an influential commentary on the Theban plays of SophoclesSophokles (1534) as an introduction to his commentary on Oedipus TyrannusSophoklesO.T., reprinted in Henri EstienneEstienne, Henri’s 1568 edition and elsewhere, at a time when few readers in early modern Europe were able to read Sophocles in the original Greek. In a time when AristotleAristoteles’s PoeticsAristotelesPoet. were regarded either obscure or scarcely comprehensible, and fourteen years before Francesco RobortelloRobortello, Francesco’s commentary on Aristotle’s PoeticsAristotelesPoet. appeared (1548) – establishing AristotleAristoteles as authentia on that issue – and just before MelanchthonMelanchthon, Philipp’s Christianization of Greek tragedy through which Protestant Humanists marked a pivotal moment in the history of interpretation of Greek tragedy, Camerarius performed the Aristotelization of Sophoclean tragedy,23 in a way of conciliating AristotleAristoteles’s normative theory of tragedy in his PoeticsAristotelesPoet. and attempts to make sense of Sophoclean drama. Camerarius defines tragedy as a moral lesson, that is an imitation of momentous events entailing an unexpected and