Jan de Spauter (

Ninove Ninove () is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flanders, Flemish province of East Flanders in Belgium. It is on the river Dender, and is part of the Denderstreek. The municipality comprises the city o ...

, c. 1480 – Komen, 1520) was a prominent

Flemish Flemish may refer to: * Flemish, adjective for Flanders, Belgium * Flemish region, one of the three regions of Belgium *Flemish Community, one of the three constitutionally defined language communities of Belgium * Flemish dialects, a Dutch dialec ...

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...

. His name was Latinized to Johannes Despauterius as was common in the Middle Ages.

Life

At the age of 18 Despauterius went to the humanistic college ''De Lelie'' in

Leuven Leuven (, , ), also called Louvain (, , ), is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipalit ...

where he studied for three years. In Leuven he became a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...

: which meant he had studied and mastered

Latin grammar Latin is a heavily inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for number and case; pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, case, and gender; and verbs are inflected for person, numbe ...

rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...

dialectic Dialectic (; ), also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. Dialectic resembles debate, but the ...

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

a, arithmica, geometrica and astronomica. After his studies he started teaching.

Works

After several years of teaching experience, Despauterius published books on Latin grammar: ''Syntaxis'' , ''Ars versificatoria'', ''Grammatica pars prima'' and ''Ortographia''. They became the standard works of reference for the study of Latin for the following centuries in Western Europe.

Legacy

At the end of the 17th century, James Kirkwood was asked what he thought of the Latin grammar of Despauter. He replied that if some defects were remedied, it could be made excellent. He was commissioned to make a revision, which appeared as ''Grammatica Despauteriana'' in 1695, followed by several later editions.

Thomas Ruddiman Thomas Ruddiman (October 167419 January 1757) was a Scotland, Scottish classical scholar. Life Ruddiman was born on a farm near Boyndie, three miles from Banff in Banffshire, where his father was a farmer. He was educated locally and then stud ...

's grammar of 1714 is considered to have superseded it.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Despauterius, Johannes 1480s births 1520 deaths 16th-century writers in Latin Flemish Renaissance humanists Historical linguists French textbook writers