UPDATED! The Gennadius Library's Clean Monday celebration in New York City will have a change of venue this year to Kellari Taverna and will be held on February 27, 2012. Festivities begin at 6:30 pm. and feature great food for the Lenten season, an auction, music and dancing! Read details here.
Science of Language
This collection begins with the first dated Greek book, printed in Milan in 1476; a Greek grammar entitled The Summary of the Eight Parts of Speech by Constantine Lascaris. It was still in use as late as 1850. The second dated Greek book, printed in Milan in 1480, was this same grammar, improved by adding a Latin translation in facing columns. Grammars and dictionaries were essential tools for young Italians eager to learn Greek, and such volumes account for at least one third of the 64 Greek books printed in the fifteenth century.
The works of the Greek grammarians Lascaris, Chrysoloras, and Theodore Gaza were constantly in demand down to the mid-1550, and the Gennadius collection includes nearly a hundred of these. As early as 1520, however, a substantial grammar was composed by Joannes Oecolampadius of Basel, and in 1530 Nicolaus Clenardus, a Flemish professor of Hebrew and Greek, brought out another, which became a standard for two hundred years. An extremely rare, although more modern, reference work is also of particular interest. This is the Grammar of Classical Greek, compiled in Modern Greek by Neophytos Vamvas for the students of the Public School of Chios, printed at the School Press in 1821. A few copies were sent abroad before the “massacre of Chios” destroyed the island. The Gennadeion’s copy is the one sent to Ambroise Firmin-Didot in Paris. Note should also be made of the section of the Greek Alphabet books: these spelling books form a set not easily to be found elsewhere. They are all exceptionally fine copies and in some cases unique.