Everything about Johannes Goropius Becanus totally explained
Johannes Goropius Becanus (
1519-
1572) was a
Dutch physician, linguist, and
humanist. He was born
Jan Gerartsen in the town of
Gorp, situated in the
municipality of
Hilvarenbeek. As was the fashion of the time, Gerartsen adopted a
latinized surname based on the name of his birthplace,
Goropius being rendered from "Van Gorp"' and
Becanus referring to "Hilvarenbeek."
He studied medicine in
Leuven, and became physician to two sisters of
Charles V: Marie and Eleonore, who were based in
Brussels at the time.
Philip II, the son of Charles V, wanted him also as his doctor and offered him a rich income. Goropius refused and established himself as
medicus (town doctor) of
Antwerp in
1554. Here, free of courtly intrigues, Goropius dedicated himself completely to the study of languages.
Goropius dedicated himself to studying antiquity during this time, and became fluent in many languages. Goropius theorized that Antwerpian Flemish, or
Brabantic, spoken in the region between the
Scheldt and
Meuse Rivers, was the
original language spoken in Paradise. Goropius believed that the most ancient language on Earth would be the simplest language, and that the simplest language would contain mostly short words. Since the number of short words is higher in Brabantic than it's in
Latin,
Greek, and
Hebrew, Goropius reasoned that it was the older language.
A corollary of this theory was that all languages derived ultimately from Brabantic. The Latin word for “oak,”
quercus, Goropius derived from
werd-cou (“keeps out cold”); the Hebrew name “Noah” he derived from
nood (“need”). Goropius also believed that
Adam and Eve were Brabantic names (from
Hath-Dam, or “dam against hate"; and
Eu-Vat, “barrel from which people originated,” or from
Eet-Vat, “oath-barrel,” respectively). Another corollary was the placement of the
Garden of Eden itself in the Brabant region. In the book known as
Hieroglyphica, Goropius also proved to his satisfaction that
Egyptian hieroglyphics represented
Brabantic.
There is an allusion to this theory in
Ben Jonson's
The Alchemist, where one character speaks of planks written on by
Adam "in High Dutch: which proves it was the original tongue".
In spite of his extensive travels in Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Britain, Goropius remained attached to his homeland, and reported on various curiosities and customs from his native region. In his
Origines Antwerpianae (
1569), a treatise describing the antiquities of Antwerp, Goropius reports various curiosities, among them that a youth almost nine feet tall and a woman about ten feet tall lived near his home. He also reports that
Ters, a deity who seems to have been an equivalent of
Priapus, was invoked by Antwerpian women when they were taken by surprise or sudden fear, and that there was a house in Antwerp adjoining the prison that bore a statue which had been furnished with a large worn away
phallus.
Goropius died in
Maastricht.
Legacy
Christoffel Plantijn had been a friend of Goropius' and the Antwerp-based printing house known as the
Plantin Press, which first published Goropius' works in
1569, printed the linguist-physician’s posthumous collected work in
1580 as a massive volume of more than a thousand pages. Goropius' work was met with a mixture of ridicule and admiration. Goropius is considered to have given Dutch linguistics, and Gothic philology in general, a bad name. Though Goropius had admirers (among them
Abraham Ortelius and
Richard Hakluyt), his etymologies have been considered "linguistic chauvinism," and
Leibniz coined the term "goropism" to mean "absurd etymology."
Justus Lipsius and
Hugo Grotius discounted Goropius’ linguistic theories. "Never have I read greater nonsense," the scholar
Joseph Scaliger wrote of Goropius' etymologies.
However, Goropius’ work precedes that of
William Jones, the “discoverer” of the Indo-European language family, and though replete with eccentric and ridiculous etymologies, nevertheless can be considered a foundation for the field of
historical linguistics.
Sources
Further Information
Get more info on 'Johannes Goropius Becanus'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://johannes_goropius_becanus.totallyexplained.com">Johannes Goropius Becanus Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
