Abstract
Zurich scholar Konrad Clauser's translation of Chalkokondyles was printed in 1556 at Oporinus' publishing house in Basel. The present paper reconstructs the circumstances of the formation of that translation, provides a detailed account of the publication, attempts to establish which manuscript may have served as the basis for the translation, and presents an outline of the immediate reception of the translation.
It was in an unusual way that the broader reading public first encountered the historical work Apodeixis historion by Laonikos Chalcocondyles, since the first printed version, which was also the first Byzantine historical work to appear in print, did not publish the text in its original Greek, but in a Latin translation by Konrad Clauser (1556). Even the second printed edition presented the Apodeixis in a foreign language, this time in Blaise de Vigenère's French translation (1577). The editio princeps proper, that is, the Baumbach's edition of the Greek text, would not appear until more than half a century after the Latin version (1615), followed by Fabrot's edition in the Paris corpus (1650) and Bekker's version in the Bonn corpus (1843). The version considered the authoritative edition of the Greek text down to the present day was published by the Hungarian Byzantinologist Jenő Darkó (1922–1927). That edition, containing some five hundred printed pages, was published in three volumes almost a hundred years ago, so the time is ripe for a new critical edition.1 My present paper is intended to outline the main issues involved in the creation of the Latin translation of Chalcocondyles' text.
The translator was Conradus Clauserus Tigurinus, or Konrad Clauser of Zurich, who was a schoolmaster and Lutheran pastor (I will hereafter refer to him by his vernacular name). We have little and contradictory information about Clauser's life. His date of birth is uncertain, but he was born some time around 1515. All we know about his family background is that his ancestors and extended family included several pharmacists and doctors. Although it was once thought that he died of the plague in 1611 at an exceptionally advanced age,2 this information pertains to one of his sons, Hans Konrad, also a clergyman,3 while Konrad Clauser probably died before 1562,4 but certainly no later than 1567,5 after several years of illness. He was educated in Basel, Marburg, and Mainz. He married Veronika, the daughter of Zwingli's disciple Jakob Wiesendanger (Ceporinus), and their marriage was not short of children. He was the author of several not particularly original theological and pedagogical works. Clauser's educational principles were most fully developed in his De educatione puerorum. His major translation activity focused on translating late antique authors into Latin: in addition to Chalcocondyles, he translated the works of Procopius of Gaza and Theophilus of Antioch.
Under what circumstances, how, and by whom Clauser was commissioned to translate the Apodeixis can only be reconstructed with some uncertainty from scattered references in the correspondence of the humanists who were involved in the enterprise in one way or another.6 The sketchy history of events is as follows. The imperial councillor Leonhard Beck of Augsburg sent an unidentified manuscript of Chalcocondyles' to the well-known Basel publisher Johannes Oporinus, requesting that he should arrange its translation.7 Oporinus agreed to take on the task and asked permission for Clauser, who was in charge of the translation, to copy the manuscript. The date of the request and the delivery of the codex is uncertain, but a letter from Beck's intermediary Wolf to Clauser dated 10 November 1544 indicates that Clauser had sent the manuscript of the translation to Oporinus with the assistance of Johannes Fries,8 and the colophon of the printed version of Clauser's translation indicates that the work had already been completed in 1544: “This is the end of the tenth and last book of the Turkish History authored by Laonikos the Athenian, translated by Konrad Clauser of Zurich. 1 November 1544.”9 Although Wolf also allowed the manuscript to be copied by Clauser, the translator, and Sebastian Guldibek,10 the copying proved more difficult than expected. In March 1545 Oporinus was repeatedly apologising for the delay, so he still had the manuscript.11 The codex was presumably returned to Beck in the end because Clauser tried to borrow it again two years later, but his request was refused.12 Nevertheless, in the Gessner lexicon of authors, Josia Simmler states that Leonhard Beck and Oporinus each possessed a manuscript of Chalcocondyles, which suggests that the copyists must have succeeded somehow.13
The work was finally published with considerable delay at Oporinus's printing house in Basel, in March 1556, titled Laonici Chalcondylae Atheniensis, de origine et rebus gestis Turcorum libri decem, nuper e Graeco in Latinum conversi Conrado Clausero Tigurino interprete, i.e. The ten books of Laonikos Chalcondyles (sic!) of Athens on the origins and deeds of the Turks, recently translated from Greek into Latin by the translator Konrad Clauser of Zurich, with the assistance of the printers Ludwig Lucius and Michael Martin Stella, together with twenty-eight (!) other works, mostly also on the Turks and of shorter length, of which the small print on the title page gives but general information. Above the publisher's trademark engraving of Arion on the back of the dolphin, there is only the following note: “We added different works of Theodorus of Gaza and other eminent scholars on the same issue, i.e. the deeds of the Turks against the Christians, and the deeds of the Christians against the Turks down to the present day. You will find the list of these works on the next page after the preface.”14
What caused the delay is subject to conjecture. Oporinus's financial situation was known to be precarious, he published his books on loans, and he rewarded his collaborators mostly with self-published volumes instead of proper wages. It is possible that the long wait was caused by a lack of financial support.
The publication is thus a rather bulky collection of texts. Chalcocondyles' work occupies less than a third of the volume, only 179 pages of the 646-page print. It is a thematic selection: the contributors to the publication wanted to create a ‘Turkish handbook’ in which the reader will find, in addition to information on the origins and history of the people, contemporary accounts of the Ottoman expansion, the fortification, siege, and capture of the cities targeted, and descriptions of the major battles. In addition to the short work on the origins of the Ottoman people by Aristotle's translator Theodoros of Gaza, mentioned by name on the title page, the items notably include Filippo Buonaccorsi's (Philippus Callimachus Experiens) treatise on the Battle of Varna, the Albanian humanist Marin Barleti's historical work on the Siege of Shkodra, the De bello Rhodio by Jacobus Fontanus of Bruges in three books, Jan Berot/Johannes Etrobius's account of Charles V's Conquest of Tunis, and so on. With the exception of the Chalcocondyles translation, the works included in the volume were not new to the reader, all having been previously published and widely known. The subject matter was chosen for obvious reasons: the increasingly rapid advance of the Turks and the concomitant lack of concern, or at least ineffective action, on the part of the Western powers was finally beginning to worry responsible Western European intellectuals. The so-called “Turcica” genre reached its peak of popularity in the decades before the Battle of Lepanto (1571). The number of short pamphlets on the origins, history, and customs of the Turks had reached the order of a few thousands by the 16th century.15
It is interesting to note that the book was printed simultaneously in two versions, with the same content but with two different dedications. For the better-known version, the translator Konrad Clauser himself wrote the preface. Clauser, as he explains in detail in his voluminous, nineteen-page introduction dedicated to Adam von Schwalbach, Grand Master of the Order of the Knights of Malta, and his brother, the jurist Georg Otho Schwalbach, intended his work primarily as a call to attention. According to his basic premise, the most important mission of the Christian world was immediately to liberate the territories of Europe occupied by the Turks under the leadership of a united and strengthened Holy Roman Empire (Germania in Clauser's wording), and this substantial compendium was intended to help achieve that goal through theory and practice. In the second version, printed at the same time and with the same title page and contents, but with a different introduction, the dedication was written not by Clauser but by Johannes Herold,16 who was working as an editor for Oporinus at the time, and addressed to Daniel Brendel von Homburg, Archbishop-Elector of Mainz. This text is considerably shorter, only four pages long, and contains the same assessment of the situation and the same wishes as Clauser's other version, but Herold expects Brendel to unite the German people, disarrayed by distrust and individual ambitions, against the common enemy. The reason for the need for a parallel recommendation is not known, but perhaps there were funding issues at play here. It is possible that Brendel contributed financially to the increase in circulation, and that Oporinus wished to reciprocate this with a new dedication, which he had his colleague write for the sake of simplicity.
Although the dedication is not short of interesting facts – Clauser gives a detailed political programme ranging from the purification of religious life through the reform of civil legislation and the military – there is no substantial information on which manuscript was the basis for the translation. What seems certain, however, is that it was a single codex, since Clauser later referred to the manuscript repeatedly as a singular exemplar Graecum. Although the enthusiastic author's eloquent and rhetorically brilliant broad-ranging explication of the work includes the name of Chalcocondyles in many places – consistently with the first name Nikolaos, less so in the variants of the surname Chalcocondyles and Calchocondiles – the scattered references provide virtually no useful information about the Greek text of the work, the circumstances of its translation, or the end product itself. Only at the very end of the dedication are there a few sentences on the work of translation and the practice followed in the process. Here Clauser repeatedly emphasises that any inaccuracies in the Latin text can only be attributed to the extremely poor condition of the unnamed Greek manuscript (“Graecum exemplar corruptissimum”), and then, to clarify matters for the reader, he states that he did not translate the place names into Latin, but merely transliterated the Greek forms (Belgrade, for example, is referenced as Mpelograda, not in the Latin form Bellogradum), and that he has written further critical comments in the margin. Finally, he states that he will make up for the omissions in the edition of the Greek text – which, however, Clauser did not live to deliver.17
As far as the outward appearance of the Latin text of the Apodeixis is concerned, the presentation aims to be simple. The books beginning with initials follow each other continuously, mostly without page breaks;18 the text is structured only by capital letters written in the margin: an (A) next to the first line and a (B) roughly in the middle of the page, while there is no numbering or chapter division. There is a catchword at the bottom of each page. In the margins there are a total of 56 annotations, disproportionately distributed between the books:19 most of them record the loss of text in the Greek manuscript, some indicate the absence of a numeral, and some may give alternative readings of personal or geographical names. Clauser undertook a difficult task, indeed, when he embarked on the translation, because the condition of the source text handed down makes it very difficult, sometimes quite hopeless, to comprehend the work accurately. It is therefore of particular consequence that the edition is not bilingual, the Greek text is not there along with the Latin; nor was it, at the time of the publication of the volume, known to the general public from any other source, which means that a contemporary reader could not compare the original with the final result even if he wanted to. All this gave Clauser the opportunity to add to, paraphrase, or interpret the Greek text wherever he felt the need.
Ἐπεὶ δὲ ἐτελεύτησεν Ἀμουράτης ὁ Ὀρχάνεω ὑπ’ ἀνδρὸς Τριβαλλοῦ, αὐτίκα οἱ ἐν ταῖς θύραις ὄντες τοῦ Ἀμουράτεω ἁρμοσταὶ Παιαζήτην τὸν νεώτερον αὐτοῦ παῖδα ἐστήσαντο βασιλέα. ὁ δὲ αὐτίκα, ὡς ἔσχε τὴν βασιλείαν, μετάπεμπτον Ἰαγούπην τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ ἐποιήσατο ὡς ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς καλούμενον τοῦ Ἀμουράτεω ἐπὶ τὰς βασιλείας θύρας, φοιτῶντα καὶ πρόσθεν, ὁπότε καλοῖτο.20
“Postquam mortem obiit Amurates Orchanis filius, peremptus a viro Triballo, statim satrapae, qui regebant ianuas regis, Paiaziten Amuratis filium iuniorem pronuntiant regem. hic ubi primum in regno est positum, accersivit Iagupen, nostri Soleimannum vocant, fratrem, quasi vocaretur a patre Amurate; ad quem quocunque tempore vocabatur, promptissime ad ianuas, sic aulam Turci vocant, accedere consueverat.”
It is apparent that the otherwise roughly accurate Latin version contains two surpluses compared to the Greek. The phrases “nostri Soleimannum vocant” and “sic aulam Turci vocant” are inserted by Clauser, who intended them to facilitate the understanding of the text. Examples of similar or even more substantial translator's interventions abound. This explanatory, supplementary character is a constant feature of Clauser's translation technique, which is probably why Pierre-Daniel Huet said of him in his treatise on literary translation that “he would have done useful service in converting into Latin good authors … if he had not been carried away by too much licence.”21
As for the identification of the underlying Greek manuscript, the exemplar Graecum, we are unfortunately left to speculate, since we do not even know whether the codex used for the translation still exists or it has been lost. Fortunately, another Chalcocondyles manuscript, the Tubingensis Mb11 preserved in Tübingen, leads us, if not to Clauser, at least to Oporinus. The codex in question was originally owned by Martin Crusius, who replicated it with his students from a borrowed copy. Martin Crusius/Kraus (1526–1607) was a historian and philologist, professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Tübingen, whose rich oeuvre includes a collection entitled Turcograecia, which gives an insight into the life of the Greeks under Turkish rule.22 Crusius took the care befitting a philologist to document accurately the most important facts about the production of his new manuscript. Accordingly, after the text of the Apodeixis, on page 421 of the codex, he gives a detailed account of the history of the copying of the work. The entry reveals, among other things, that the manuscript had been borrowed from the eminent humanist Guilielmus Xylander, former rector of the University of Heidelberg.23 Xylander, whose civil name was Wilhelm Holtzman (1532–1576), was one of the most prolific translators of his time, but he also published texts and made his name in science as a professor of logic at the University of Heidelberg. Born in Augsburg, Xylander studied in Tübingen and Basel.24 It was there, in Basel, on the recommendation of Hieronymus Wolf, that he became personally acquainted with Johannes Oporinus, who later published Clauser's translation. Several of Xylander's text editions were also published with the collaboration of Oporinus's press, and the two men remained friends until Oporinus's death. According to Crusius, Xylander obtained the Chalcocondyles manuscript from Oporinus, which he later lent on to the Tübingen group for copying. We do not know exactly when and under what circumstances Xylander acquired the codex. It is possible that Oporinus himself gave it to him (as a gift? a loan? to prepare the Greek edition?), but he may alternatively have obtained it after the printer's death in 1568.25 On the basis of the available data, however, we can assume that Oporinus himself was going to prepare the Greek text for publication, since the printer's catalogue mentioned the Apodeixis as a forthcoming publication under the title Laonici Chalcocondylae de origine et rebus gestis Turcorum libri X Graece (!) et Latine while Oporinus was still alive.26 Crusius's entry is equally interesting in that, like Clauser, he stated that the condition of the manuscript in question was extremely poor (“plurimum mendose scriptum”). Crusius and his students therefore copied the Apodeixis in the spring of 1575, returned it to Xylander, and, after the latter's death less than a year later, the codex was eventually returned to the library of the University of Heidelberg. Among the manuscripts preserved in Heidelberg at the time were three Chalcocondyles codices, one of which, now known as Vaticanus Palatinus 396, contains Crusius's handwriting, who, with characteristic care, also noted the fact of his borrowing in this manuscript, the sample he used for copying.27 This codex, the Vaticanus Palatinus 396, was consequently the Chalcocondyles owned by Oporinus, which is presumably what Simler was also talking about. The Vaticanus Palatinus 396 is the work of two hands, and according to the modern catalogue – in relative agreement with Clauser and Crusius – “carelessly copied” (“ineleganter exaratus”).28 In principle, it could be a manuscript copied from the Beck codex by Clauser and Guldibek, or Beck's manuscript itself, but there is no evidence for this. In fact, according to our current knowledge, the prototype for the manuscript was Laurentianus 57, 9, which could not have been Beck's manuscript.29 Unfortunately, this is as close as we can get to Clauser's exemplar Graecum at the moment.
The immediate aftermath of the history of Clauser's translation is closely intertwined with the publication of the Corpus Historiae Byzantinae series, the first monumental undertaking in Byzantine studies.30 Hieronymus Wolf (1516–1580), the humanist historian and librarian of the House of Fugger,31 published the first volume of his epoch-making historical series with the Greek and Latin text of Zonaras in 1557, also with Oporinus, followed a few months later by the Greco-Latin edition of Niketas Choniates.32 The aim of the series was to provide a coherent overview of the history of the Byzantine Empire through selected Byzantine historical works, in the form of a historia continua of sorts. Wolf filled the chronological gap in the published texts with a new volume, printed in 1562, a few years after Clauser's translation, in which he published the work of Chalcocondyles in addition to bilingual excerpts from Nikephoros Gregoras, but still, in the absence of a suitable manuscript, only the Latin translation without the Greek text.33 This time, however, Clauser's translation got competition in the form of the translation by the Viennese humanist and lawyer Philip Gundel.34 As the correspondence between Wolf and Oporinus reveals, the issue was raised again and again over the years. In a letter dated 15 October 1558, Wolf first raised the possibility – as a blind offer! – of publishing Gundel's translation and the text of the Greek manuscript (!), justifying his choice with the latter's allegedly excellent condition (“I believe that Laonikos will be included in the volume in Greek and Latin, moreover, in Philip Gundel's translation, because he is said to possess a complete and corrected manuscript”).35 From which manuscript Gundel translated, we do not know. Two years later (1 February 1560), Wolf's earlier enthusiasm seemed to have abated after seeing the translation, in which the categorical refusal of his patron Anton Fugger no doubt played a decisive role (“Gundel's version is less Latinate than Clauser's, but he is superior to the other in the recognition of proper names. It will be no great loss if it is not accepted. For the old man says he wants nothing to do with a lawyer”).36 Although Gundel had a strong patron in Hans Dernschwam, who used all his influence with Wolf to ensure that his friend's work would ultimately be the winner, the dispute dragged on.37 Eventually, Gundel had had enough of the wrangling, asked for the manuscript of his translation back and waived his mention in the publication. At this point, Wolf suggested that Oporinus should transpose the relevant passages from Gundel's translation into Clauser's and write a dedication to the Fuggers, as it was rumoured that Clauser had died.38 Whether Gundel's preferable solutions had actually been adopted is not known, but in any case, the recommendation was written by Oporinus, and the following sentence was written on the inner title page of the volume: “His [i. e. libris Nicephori Gregorae] adiunximus Laonici Chalcocondylae Turcicam historiam, Conrado Clausero Tigurino interprete: sed recognitam ab eodem et ad D. Philippi Gundeli exemplar emendatam.” This embarrassing incident probably contributed to the following exclamation in Wolf's autobiography: “While I was working day and night on Byzantine history, and missed my usual walks, I got a severe stomach ulcer.”39
The accuracy, errors and general quality of Clauser's translation could be discussed at length. One thing is certain, however; namely, that whenever the Apodeixis was subsequently reprinted in Latin – and there were several such instances – it was always based on Clauser's work. Konrad Clauser's translation is to be found in Baumbach's editio princeps, in Fabrot's Paris edition, in Bekker's version in the Bonn corpus, as well as in the corresponding volume of the Patrologia Graeca.
Acknowledgement
This study has been prepared with the support of the research project NKFIH K 134301 and NKFIH NN 124539.
Darkó, E.: Laonici Chalcocandylae Historiarum demonstrationes. Tomus I. Praefationem, codicum catalogum et libros I–IV continens. Budapest 1922; Tomi II. Pars prior libros V–VII continens. Budapest 1923; Pars posterior libros VIII–X continens. Budapest 1927.
Mähly, J.: Konrad Clauser. In Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 4 (1876) 285.
Henrich, R.: Konrad Clauser. In Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz 7 (2008) 256.
See n. 36. and n. 37.
Frei, P.: Conradus Clauserus Tigurinus (ca. 1515–1567): Pfarrer, Schulmann, Gelehrter. Zürich 1997, 50–51.
In details see Frei (n. 5) 74–80.
This is revealed in Johannes Wolf's letter to Clauser dated 17 January 1545: Zentralbibliothek Zürich (ZBZ) Ms F 41.396r.
ZBZ Ms F 41, 387v–388r.
“Finis decimi et ultimi libri Historiarum Turcicarum, quas conscripsit Laonicus Atheniensis, interprete Conrado Clausero Tigurino. 1 Novembr. 1 Anno salutis 1544.”
See his letter to Oporinus dated 17 January 1545: Universitätsbibliothek Basel Frey-Gryn. (UBB FrGr) Ms F I 11.370.
Jenny, B. R.: Die Amerbachkorrespondenz 10/2. Basel 1995, 719.
See the letter from Johannes Haller to Heinrich Bullinger dated 10 March 1547: Staatsarchiv des Kantons Zürich E II 370. 57r–58v.
Bibliotheca instituta a Conrado Gesnero, locupletata et recognita per Josiam Simlerum, jam vero amplificata per Johannem-Jacobum Frisium. Zürich 1583, 517: “Habet codicem manuscriptum illustris vir Leonardus Beck à Beckenstein, civis Augustanus, & c.& alium Ioan. Oporinus Basileae.”
“Adiecimus Theodori Gazae, et aliorum quoque doctorum virorum, eiusdem argumenti, de rebus Turcorum adversus Christianos, et Christianorum contra illos hactenus ad nostra usque tempora gestis, diversa Opuscula, quorum Catalogum proxima post Praefationem pagella reperies.”
See Göllner, C.: Turcica. Die europäischen Turkendrucke des 16. Jahrhunderts I–III. Bukarest 1961–1978.
Burckhardt, A.: Herold(t), Johannes. In Neue Deutsche Biographie 8 (1969) 678.
It is worth quoting the passage in question at length: „Quod ad versionem nostram attinet, viri clarissimi (i. e. the Schwalbach-brothers), vos atque adeo omnes iterum atque iterum rogo, eam aequi bonique consulere velitis. Si quae in nostra versione est obscuritas, eam peperit Graecum exemplar corruptissimum. In relatione locorum nihil mutavimus, sed regiones et oppida iisdem pene nominibus, quibus autor ipse, enunciavimus. Exempli gratia, ubi in exemplari legitur Mpelograda, quamvis per id nomen nobis significetur Bellogradum, non Bellogradum, sed Mpelograda vertimus: cum nostris hanc vocem familiarem et notiorem arbitrarer. De reliquis idem sentiendum est. Quamprimum correctius obvenerit exemplar Graecum, obscura et varia lectio elucidabitur et enucleabitur, et semper ad marginem adicientur (sicuti Geographicae rationes postulant) quaenam locorum vocabula fuerint ad priscos. Haec omnia dabit Graeci exemplaris editio. Nos certe nullam, quod sciam, obscuritatem inveximus, nisi quam in exemplari Graeco, eodemque corrupto invenimus.”
Books IV, V, VI, VII, IX, and X begin in the middle of the respective page.
The distribution of marginal entries is as follows: I: 11, II: 2, III: 12, IV: 3, V: 7, VI: 3, VII: 3, VIII: 2, IX: 9, X: 4.
“After Murad, the son of Orhan, died by the hand of a Serb, the officers of his Porte immediately appointed Bayezid, his younger son, as sultan. As soon as he had assumed the throne, Bayezid sent for his brother Yakub and made it seem as though he was being summoned to the royal Porte by his father Murad. Yakub had spent time there in the past too, whenever he summoned.” Translated by Anthony Kaldellis.
Huet, P.-D.: De interpretatione libri duo: quorum prior est De optimo genere interpretandi: alter, De claris interpretibus. Stadae 1680, 275: „Utilem in bonis auctoribus convertendis operam navassent Conradi Clauserus, & Gesnerus Tigurini, nisi eos nimia licentia extra metas abripuisset.”
Widmann, H.: Martin Crusius. In Neue Deutsche Biographie 3 (1957) 433–434.
„Acceperat Exemplar D. Xylander a D. Joan. Oporino piae mem. Ego vero a Xylandro, ut posui, 2. Mart. 1575. quod mihi describendo omnino absolutum est a die quinto Mart. usque ad ult. diem April. 1575. Tybingae.”
Schöll, F.: Wilhelm Xylander. In Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 44 (1898) 582–593.
See Gilly, C.: Die Manuskripte in der Bibliothek des Johannes Oporinus. Basel 2001, 10.
See Librorum per Ioannem Oporinum partim excusorum hactenus, partim in eiusdem officina venalium index. Basel 1567, 37.
The short entry (208v) reads “D. Guilielmo Xylandro benigne commodante ego Martinus Crusius Tybingae perlegi. 1575.”
Stevenson, H. M.: Codices manuscripti Palatini Graeci Bibliothecae Vaticanae. Roma 1885, 253–254.
See Wurm, H.: Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der ΑΠΟΔΕΙΞΙΣ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΩΝ des Laonikos Chalkokondyles. Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 45 (1995) 223–232.
Della Rocca de Candal, G.: Bibliographia Historica Byzantina: A Historical and Bibliographical Description of the Early Editions of the Corpus Historiae Byzantinae. PhD thesis. Oxford, 2015.
Beck, H.-G.: Der Vater der deutschen Byzantinistik. Das Leben des Hieronymus Wolf von ihm selbst erzählt. München 1984.
Husner, F.: Die Editio princeps des Corpus historiae Byzantinae: Johannes Oporin, Hieronymus Wolf und die Fugger. In Festschrift Karl Schwarber. Basel 1949, 143–162; Reinsch, D. R.: Hieronymus Wolf as Editor and Translator of Byzantine Texts. In Marciniak P. – Smythe, D. C. (eds): The Reception of Byzantium in European Culture since 1550. Abingdon – New York 2016, 43–53.
Nota bene: The Augsburg-based Leonhard Beck was a relative of the Thurzó family of Bethlenfalva, who ran a joint business with the Fuggers also residing in Augsburg. The two families further sealed their business relationship by marriages: György Thurzó married Anna Fugger, while Katalin Thurzó was wedded to Raymond Fugger. Based on these facts, one may presume a connection between Beck and the Fuggers, though no concrete evidence of this has been found. In the above mentioned correspondence concerning the Chalcocondyles translation, the Fuggers' name does not appear.
See Geiger, L.: Philipp Gundelius. In Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 10 (1879) 124–125.
UBB FrGr Ms F I 11, 220r: „Puto enim additum iri graece et latineque Laonicum Philippo Gundelio interprete, qui codicem integrum et castigatum habere dicitur.”
UBB FrGr Ms F I 11, 232r–v: „Gundelii versio minus latina est quam Clauseri, sed in propriis nominibus explicandis vincit alteram. Non magnam iacturam facies illa non accepta. Negat enim senex [i.e. Anton Fugger] se cum iureconsulto sibi quicquam negocii esse velle.”
See the letter from Dernschwam to Wolf dated 2 February 1562 in Orbán Á.: Hans Dernschwam két levele Johannes Oporinushoz és Hieronymus Wolfhoz: a Zónarász-corvina és a Corpus historiae Byzantinae kiadástörténetének fordulatai új megvilágításban [Hans Dernschwam's Letters to Johannes Oporinus and Hieronymus Wolf: New Light on the Twists of the Publication History of the Zonaras Codex and the Corpus historiae Byzantinae]. Lymbus (2020) 65–82, 75–80. NB: This letter also indicates that Clauser is already dead.
See the letter from Wolf to Oporinus dated 25 April 1562 (UBB FrGr Ms F I 11, 252r–v): „Philippus Gundelius Chalcocandylis interpres repetit suam versionem, nec ullam sui mentionem in editione vult fieri … Clauseri versio Latinior et elegantior est, nec minus ut opinor fidelis. Sed illud habet Gundelius, quod propria nomina corrupta a Graeco, restituit in integrum, et annotationes addidit alicubi non inutiles. Quae si tu e Gundeliana in Clauserianam transtuleris (id quod unius dieculae succisiva opera facile perficies) nihil erit, quod obstet, quo minus ille suam lucubrationem recipiat, nisi forte iam caeperis excudere … Quid ergo si tu (si verum est, Clauserum nostrum obiisse) DD Fuggeris dedicares?”
„Nam dum in Byzantine historia dies noctesque laboro, solitasque deambulationes intermitto, magnam stomachi debilitatem sensi.”
