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 undeserved change of the tragic hero’s fortune from bad to good, around περιπέτεια, but categorically rejecting the workings of divine justice against the wicked being punished upon what they deserve, because in such cases the spectators or the readers could neither feel nor have pity, elements that in AristotleAristoteles’s concept of ἁμαρτία must result as the emotional effect of tragedy from its plot structure. When Camerarius began in his influential work what Michael Lurie has called the “Aristotelization of Greek tragedy”,24 the interpretation of the plays according to contemporary understanding of the PoeticsAristotelesPoet., he merely understood tragedy presenting a virtuous person suffering an undeserved fate that arouses in the spectators pity and fear. By reflecting this Aristotelian conception of Greek tragedy, Camerarius sees AntigoneSophoklesAnt. as the virtous protagonist unjustly destroyed; even Oedipus, a morally good being, commits crimes unknowingly, as an outcome of ignorance.25SophoklesAnt. After all, these moral insights into tragedy reflect Humanist receptions of Greek tragedy,26Stählin, Friedrich especially in the seminal works of Camerarius and MelanchthonMelanchthon, Philipp.
The extant and thematic range of Camerarius’ writings are typical of a scholar of German Humanism in the 16th century, in that he left a prodigious oeuvre both of quantity and of thematic usage; unfortunately, there is still no modern complete edition, nor is there a comprehensive and chronologically reliable bibliography, so as to reinforce his eminent position in German classical scholarship. The number of books printed under his name are at least 183 – translations from Greek to Latin and an almost equally large number of commentaries on Greek and Latin authors, and original works on historical and antiquarian topics –, not to mention minor revisions of works or re-printings; besides, poems in Greek and Latin which attest his excellent knowledge of both classical languages and literary style. In that considerable body of Latin verse, published in vol. II of the Delitiae poetarum Germanorum (1612), we can read two eclogues appearing among the pastorals, literary in inspiration but not wholly derivative in content, and eighteen Latin and two Greek pastorals in Libellus continens eclogasCamerarius d.Ä., JoachimEclogae (Leipzig 1568).27 His pastorals are interesting as a philological project in which he combined various elements from VirgilVergil to present a new bucolic situation that creates new myths, so as to add a new motif to the classical repertoire; for instance, in the attractive second of his eclogues Dirae, seu Lupus, a poem of 112 hexameters with a few elisions.28 Well-known are also the translation into Latin of two of his friend Albrecht DürerDürer, Albrecht’s (1471–1528) vernacular works on art expressing the German Renaissance and his composed Epistularum familiarum libri VI, Epistularum familiarum libri V and Epistulae posteriores, published as a corpus of five volumes at Frankfurt in 1583 and 1595. The influence on Camerarius from such poets as TheocritusTheokrit, BionBion von Smyrna and MoschusMoschus, and Camerarius’ role in reconnecting 16th-century bucolic verse with the Greek origin of the genre, attribute much to the evaluation of his poetic personality, which lies beyond his philological oeuvre including biographies of celebrated contemporaries, e.g. Helius Eobanus HessusHessus, Helius Eobanus, Philipp MelanchthonMelanchthon, Philipp, George of Anhalt and Albrecht DürerDürer, Albrecht, ecclesiastical history, theological treatises, works of pedagogy and natural science, and a substantial correspondence with contemporary Humanists.
The most extensive, however, are his philological works, obviously intended for use in university tuition, as can be seen not only in the manuals of style, rhetoric and grammar, but also in the forewords to his many commented editions of Greek and Latin texts, from HomerHomer to Christian late antiquity. These editions formed the core of Camerarius’ philological activity and form the qualitative arguments upon which he might be considered the most important Humanist after ErasmusErasmus von Rotterdam, Desiderius. His primary activity was that of a critic, editor, and commentator; he edited
