¹ Born at Odiham, Hants., 1468. Godson of Grocyn; probably entered Magdalen College, Oxford, 1486. B.A., probably in the spring of 1490. Went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, visited Rhodes and Rome, where his name appears in the records of the English Hospice Nov. 4, 1490 (see my forthcoming edition of the Liber Ordinacionum of the Hospice). After ι studying with Sulpitius Verulanus and Pomponius Laetus, he returned to England (probably by 1495). He probably taught school before being appointed the first headmaster of Colet's new school, St. Paul's (c. 1510-1523). He was regarded as one of the most learned men of his age; Erasmus praised him highly. He was a close friend of St. Thomas More, with whom he contended in friendly rivalry in translating selections from the Greek Anthology into Latin verse (published at Basle, 1518, as Progymnasmata). Besides occasional Latin verse, he wrote (together with William Horman and Robert Aldrich) a fierce diatribe against the grammarian Whittinton, Robert, the Antibossicon (London: Pynson, 1521); three grammatical treatises: the Rudimenta, Grammatices, a small syntax in English, published with Colet's Aeditio, an accidence (c. 1509-10); the Libellus de Constructione Octo Partium Orationis (London: Pynson, 1513), a syntax in Latin; De Generibus Nominum ac Verborum Praeteritis et Supinis Regulae (date of first edition unknown), two short Latin grammatical poems on accidence. All of this material was used in compiling the grammar which appeared about 1540 in two parts, An Introduction of the Eyght Partes of Speche, and the Institutio Compendiaria Totius Grammaticae, each a complete grammar, the first in English, the second in Latin. The two parts were usually printed together, the whole being known popularly as Lily's Grammar; the book was made the official grammar for all England, and for a long time enjoyed a monopoly; it was printed beyond the middle of the nineteenth century. See my article, “The Grammatical Writings of William Lily,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XXXVII (1943), 85-113. Lily died in London, 1523, of the plague, attended by the famous Linacre, who had registered at the English Hospice on the same day with him over thirty years before. He had been happily married, and was the father of fifteen children; he was the grandfather of John Lyly, the dramatist. See the Dictionary of National Biography, art., “Lily, William,” XXXIII, 264-6 (reliable, for the most part), and my unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Life and Works of William Lily (University of Chicago, 1939).Google Scholar

² Ad Paulum Iovium Episcopum Nucer. Virorum aliquot in Britannia. qui nostro seculo eruditione. & doctrina clari. memorabilesque fuerunt. Elogia. per Georgium Lilium Briannum exarata, printed with the Descriptio Britanniae. Scotiae. Hyberniae. et Orchadum. ex libro Pauli Iovii. episcopi Nucer … (Venice, 1548), fol. 47: “Qui Guilielmus Lilius mira peregrinandi cupiditate, ingenuus puer Hierosolimam usque pietatis causa studio peruagalus, mox inde rediens, Rhodi aliquamdiu literarum causa substitit, ibique latine pariter, graecae linguae rudimenta perdidicit.” Google Scholar

³ For example, Warton, Thomas, A History of English Poetry (London, 1871), III, 338 (first published 1774-81), says that Lily remained five years in Rhodes. I can trace this back no further than Tanner, Thomas, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica (London, 1748), p. 481. While Lily was still alive, Beatus Rhenanus had stated that Lily had spent several years (aliquot annos) in Rhodes (in the epistle dedicatory of Froben's 1518 edition of the Progymnasmata), quoted in Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus , ed. Horawitz, Adalbert and Hartfelder, Karl (Leipzig, 1886), p. 104; but the known chronology of Lily's life would seem to limit the visit to a few months (see above, n. 1).Google Scholar

⁴ Vol. V (1760), 2969.Google Scholar

⁵ Athenae Oxoniensis , ed. Bliss, Philip (London, 1813) I, 33.Google Scholar

⁶ Fuller, Thomas, The History of the Worthies of England (London, 1811), I, 410 (first edition, 1662).Google Scholar

⁷ A History of English Poetry (London, 1871), III, 338. He is quoting the 1570 edition of Barclay, fol. 185a.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid. Google Scholar

⁹ Warton, , p. 339; Barclay, , fol. 54a. Warton declares (ibid.) that the “prevailing practice of going abroad for instruction … certainly proved of no small detriment to our English schools and universities”—a view which seems strangely shortsighted. “Yet,” he continues, “this practice was encouraged by some of our bishops, who had received their education in English universities.” He then gives instances: Richard Pace, sent by Bishop Langton of Winchester to Padua and Bologna; and Richard Croke, maintained by Warham in Louvain, Leipzig, and Paris, for twelve years! Google Scholar

¹⁰ Rossi, Ettore, Il sovrano militare Ordine gerosolimitano di Malta (Rome, 1932), pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

¹¹ Cf. Nouvelle Biographie Générale, art. “Djem,” XIV, 363-8; Maiuri, Amadeo, Rodi (Rome, 1922), p. 22.Google Scholar

¹² Bosio, Iacomo, Dell'istoria della Sacra Religione et Ill. ma Militia di San Giovanni Gerosolimitano (Rome, 1594), I, 413–415.Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid. , p. 413.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Op. cit. , p. 20.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Sommi-Picenardi, Guy, Itinéraire d'un chevalier de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem daft l'île de Rhodes (Lille, 1900), p. 125.Google Scholar

¹⁶ de Vertot, René Aubert, Histoire des chevaliers hospitaliers de St.-Jean de Jérusalem (nouv. éd.; Paris, 1778-80), III, 282.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Art. “Ciriaco d'Ancona,” X, 438.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Enciclopedia Italiana , art. “Buondelmonti, Cristoforo,” VIII, 117.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Christoph. Bondelmontii Florentini Librum Insularum Archipelagi ed. de Sinner, Gabriel R. L. (Leipzig and Berlin, 1824), p. 20: “… octo illos annos quos Rhodi degit, de quibus supra dixi, non esse accipiendos de commoratione ibi deinceps unoque tenore facta; Rhodus, ut videtur, potius locus erat, in quem e singulis itineribus semper redibat.” Google Scholar

²⁰ Enciclopedia Italiana , VIII, 117.Google Scholar

²¹ Op. cit. , p. 21.Google Scholar

²² Ibid. , p. 22.Google Scholar

²³ Ibid. , p. 23.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ibid. , pp. 24–25. “Corayo” in the quotation probably means the Greek edition of Strabo by Corayus, D. (Paris, 1815).Google Scholar

²⁵ Cf. Bosio, , I, 343.Google Scholar

²⁶ The best account of him is that of Joseph Vernazza, prefixed to the Turin edition of his Cronica (1780). (The first edition was printed at Casale, in 1639.) Google Scholar

²⁷ The chief study on Sabba da Castiglione is that of Pasolini-Zanelli, G., Un Cavaliere a Rodi ed un Pittore del Secolo XVI (Treviso, 1893).Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid. , p. 8.Google Scholar

²⁹ Ibid. , pp. 98–100.Google Scholar

³⁰ Ibid. , pp. 22–24.Google Scholar

³¹ Ibid. , p. 20.Google Scholar

³² Ibid. , pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid. , p. 24.Google Scholar

³⁴ His chief work is his Ricordi (first printed edition 1546—according to Giulio Reichenbach, “Castiglione, Sabba da,” Enciclopedia Italiana, App. I, 3867). Pasolini-Zanelli (p. 76) describes it thus: “I Ricordi sono una ricca miniera di notizie del secolo XVI; se da un canto ci servirono per la vita del loro autore, ci respecchiano dall' altra il movimento storico, letterario ed artistico d'allora.” Google Scholar

³⁵ Pantaleone, Henricus, Militaris ordinis Johannitarum, Rhodiorum aut Melitensium equitum, rerum memorabilium. … (Basileae, 1571) in Le Guerre di Rodi, relazioni di diversi autori sui due grandi assedi di Rodi (1480-1522), scelte e tradotte in Italiano dal latino e dal francese antico dal Dott. Emanuele F. Mizzi (Turin, 1934) pp. 107-108.Google Scholar

³⁶ Cf. Rossi, Vittorio, Il Quattrocento (Storia letteraria d'Italia; Milan, 1933), p. 45: “nel 1471 si posò ad Ancona e vi restò per cinque anni….” Google Scholar

³⁷ Cf. Agostinelli, L. e Benadduci, G., Biografia e bibliografia di Giovan Mario Filelfo (Tolentino, 1899), p. 27; Favre, Guillaume, Mélanges d'histoire littéraire (Genève, 1856), I, 139.Google Scholar

³⁸ Warton, III, 108, n. 3. Warton gives the reference as MS Laud K, 53, ad calc., which is the correct number for the old Laud catalogue of 1697; in the modern catalogue it is listed under Laud Misc. 416. See Coxe, Henricus, Catalogi Codicum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Bodleianae. Partis secundae fasciculus primus (Oxford, 1858), p. 306.Google Scholar

³⁹ For consulting the manuscript and sending me this information I am indebted to Mr. J. M. Wyllie of Oxford University.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Cf. Dictionary of National Biography , art. “Caius, John,” VIII, 221.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Printed in London, 1506, without the publisher's name.Google Scholar

⁴² Gulielmus Caorsinus (Caorsin, Caoursin), vice-chancellor of the Knights for the forty years preceding his death in 1501, author of the Obsidionis Rhodiae urbis descriptio (Venice, 1480). Cf. Biographie nationale de Belgique, art. “Caoursin, Guillaume,” III, 292-3; Torr, Cecil, Rhodes in Modern Times (Cambridge, 1887), p. 98: “The contemporary English and French and German narratives of the siege by John Kay and Mary du Puis and Bernhard von Breydenbach are all paraphrased without acknowledgement from this work of Caoursin's.” Historians are grateful to Caoursin chiefly for codifying the statutes of the Order. Revised and approved in 1493, his code was published at Venice in 1495 with the title Stabilimenta. Torr, p. 98, declares: “This code is the most valuable and the most accessible commentary on medieval Rhodes: but hitherto it has been strangely neglected.” See also infra, n. 43.Google Scholar

⁴³ For both Caoursin and Guichard see Guy Sommi-Picenardi, F., Itinéraire d'un chevalier de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem dans l'île de Rhodes (Lille, 1900), pp. 128–30. It will be sufficient here to say that Guichard was a religious—his order unknown—and a doctor of laws. Fontanus, a contemporary historian of the Knights, refers to an oration delivered by Guichard, as representative of the Order, before Pope Clement VII (1523-34): see De bello Rhodio libri tres. Clementi VII Pont. Max. dedicati. Authore Iacobo Fontano Brugensi iurisconsulto, iudice appellationum sacrae nobilisque militiae Hierosolymitanae & populi Rhodii (Romae in aedibus F. Minutii Calui, 1524), II, fol. K₂v. Sommi-Picenardi, p. 130, says that this is “un document important pour l'histoire de l'Ordre.” Torr, p. 100, agrees with this judgment: “… his statements, so far as they go, are of the highest authority… “ As for Fontanus, Torr (p. 101) remarks that Davenant evidently studied his history carefully for his own drama, The Siege of Rhodes. Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Op. cit. , pp. 128–29.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ibid. , p. 129.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Rhodes , p. 127.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid. , pp. 99–100.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Op. cit. , p. 127. Torr, , p. 103, calls the last named composition “the chief medieval poem of Rhodes.” It is edited by Wilhelm Wagner in Medieval Greek Texts (The Philological Society's Extra Volume, 1869-72: London, 1870), pp. 171-90. Torr mentions another poet of the siege of 1522 (p. 102): “There are said to be two accounts of this last siege [1522] in Greek, one by George Colybas and the other by Eleutherios a Rhodian.” He mentions, too, another genre that flourished in medieval Rhodes, that of lyric poetry (p. 102): “Many of the Greek love songs of Rhodes have survived, and more than a hundred of these are contained in one manuscript.” This manuscript, which has been edited by Wagner under the title is preserved in the British Museum, Addit. 8241.—Ibid., n. 1.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Enciclopedia Italiana , art. “Guarino Veronese,” XVIII, 27: “A Costantinopoli [Guarino] rimase cinque anni (1403-08) e dopo brevi fermate nel viaggio di ritorno a Scio e a Rodi, rimpatriò nel 1409.” Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Nicéron, Jean Paul, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des hommes illustres dans la république des lettres , VI (Paris, 1728) 199.Google Scholar

⁵¹ To be found in several places; conveniently in Rossi, E., Il sovrano militare ordine , pp. 75–78.Google Scholar

⁵² Given in Bosio, I, 332–33.Google Scholar

⁵³ Cf. Rossi, V., Il Quattrocento , p. 507. D'Aubusson was of French lineage: Enrico Pantaleone, who published a history of the Order at Basle in 1571 (note 35, supra), speaks thus of him (in the translation of Mizzi, p. 91): “[D'Aubusson era] francese di Alvergna, nato da nobilissimi genitori…. Egli aveva passata la sua puerizia sotto Sigismondo imperatore, amantissimo delle placide Muse, dimodochè era assai versato nelle Belle Lettere e conosciuto da molti cultori di Storia antica.” Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Mazzuchelli, Giovanni Maria, Gli scrittori d'Italia (Brescia, 1753-63), II, 1804. He is the only one in Bosio mentioned by Mazzuchelli; but it must not be forgotten that the latter got only as far as the letter “B” in the biographical dictionary he had planned.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Rossi, V., Il Quattrocento ; Toffanin, G., Il Cinquecento (Storia letteraria d'Italia; Milano, 1929) do not treat any of them; Sangiorgio is noted in Tiraboschi, Girolamo, Storia della letteratura Italiana (Florence, 1809), VI, 749.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Villarosa, Guglielmo, Notizie di alcuni cavalieri del sacro ordine gerosolimitano illustri per lettere e per belle arti (Naples, 1841), pp. 308–09.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ He distinguishes between “Benvenuto Sangiorgio” and “Bonaventura San Giorgio”; Bosio has only the former name, both in the 1480 list and in the general index.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Ibid. , pp. 75–78.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Ibid. , p. 292.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ di Valbranca, Adriano Weiss, “I dieci più illustri cavalieri di Malta scrittori italiani.” Rivista del Collegio araldico , X (1912), 114–16.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Ibid. , p. 114.Google Scholar

⁶² Fontanus, , De bello Rhodio (note 43, supra), II, fol. I₁ .Google Scholar

⁶³ Histoire (note 16, supra), III, 357.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Ibid. , III, 83.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ De bello Rhodio , II, fols. D₂v, D₃ .Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Ibid. , fol. D₃ .Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Ibid. , fol. D₃v.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ De bello Rhodio , II, fol. C₃. Vertot, III, 282, adds his word of commendation: “L'archevêque latin excelloit dans la parole; c'étoit un des plus éloquents prédicateurs de son siècle.” The same authority points out that the archbishop of the Greeks was “un Caloyer [i.e., a Greek monk of the order of St. Basil] appellé Clément.” This is in harmony with what Fontanus says about his reputation for abstinentia. Pantaleone, quoted in Mizzi, p. 178, says that Balestrinus was a Genovese; and that “Clemente aveva anch'egli tale fama di sant'uomo e di probo da essere da tutti reputato degnissimo dell'antica Grecia.” Google Scholar

⁶⁹ De bello Rhodio , II, fol. C₃ .Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Ibid. , fol. C₄v.Google Scholar

⁷¹ I, 215. It is of interest to find this emphasis on singing; the same requirement obtained for entrance to Magdalen College, Oxford, when Lily entered c. 1486. See Bloxam, John R., A Register of the Presidents, Fellows, Demies … and Other Members of Saint Mary Magdalen College. “The Demies” (Oxford and London, 1873), I, iii–iv.Google Scholar

⁷² Rhodes (note 42, supra), p. 97.Google Scholar

⁷³ Stabilimenta , de Baiuliuis, , xxxvi, xxxvii, xl. (Torr's note) [Paragraph xxxvi reads: “Statuimus vt cancellarius virum doctum et idoneum vicecancellarium habeat….” Paragraph xxxvii: “… nullus possit esse cancellarius nisi sciat legere & scribere….” I am quoting from the British Museum copy of the Ulm edition (Reger de Kemnat) of 1496].Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Fontanus (Torr's note).Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Giraldus, Lilius Gregorius, De poetis nostrorum temporum (1545), ed. Wotke, Karl (Berlin, 1894), p. 20.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ This could justify the expression literarum causa (see above, n. 2).Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Sec above, n. 3.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Bosio, I, 323, quotes a letter of the Grand Master to the Pope, the King of Naples, and the King of France, telling of the arrival of the Turks in 1480, and asking for help. This is how he characterizes Rhodes: “Combattuta, & assediata è la città di Rodi, capo, fortezza, ornamento & honore dell'ordine nostro, e commune refugio, ricettacolo, e casa de' Christiani in Oriente [italics mine].” Fontanus, who was in Rhodes from 1521 to 1523, speaks in a similar vein (De bello Rhodio, II, fol. K₂v.): “… eloquentissimus uir F. Thomas Guichardus in oratione sua pro Rhodiis, aerumnosae Graeciae protectio, peregrinantium diuersorium, naufragorum portus, miserorum Asylum, languidorum Xenodochium.” But I have found no panegyrist of the island refer to it as a “refugium doctorum.” Google Scholar