This page shows how students utilized commentaries to learn Latin pronunciation. The marginalia on the edge of the page shows that a student wrote out the meter of the text in order to pronounce the meter correctly.

 

 

Horace as Writer:

Horace wrote political commentaries and satires based on other writers of the day.  Scholars considered him a useful educational source during the medieval time period and beyond due to his morality lessons and grasp of everyday Latin.  Teachers used his writings in the classroom because they were easier for students to understand and to gloss. [1]

Glossing:

Glossing was a tool used in Medieval and Renaissance classrooms to help students better understand the material.  The author or commentator parsed (explained the grammar of)  the Latin, as well as the political circumstances of the author.  This allowed students to use the commentary as a tool to learn Latin as well as the morals and ethics the teacher felt they needed. [2]

In one column the commentator presents

the classical author's work and in the other

column he translates it into the vernacular,

or explains the political or moral background.

 

Using Classical Authors:

"More generally, the great poets and historians of antiquity also enjoyed a firm position in the humanistic curriculum that was intent on producing the accomplished public man, both as models of style and as explorations of the moral condition... a comprehensive range of books for the classroom, whose material is almost exclusively derived from classical authors, and whose objective is the training of young males in the forms of thought and expression that will enable them to lead good and useful lives as heads of families, professional and public figures, and in ordered civil society."[3]   Students also learned how to read and orate Latin.

"The three great authors for whom Mancinelli provided commentaries – Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal – were at the very core of the humanist canon. They had a more general appeal than the handbooks of the school curricula... and, because Latin was the language of text and commentary, they crossed national boundaries and took in the whole of civilized Europe."

"...because of the popular appeal of these classical authors, there was strong competition between printers and publishers to produce the best version...."[4]

Why a Commentary?

Commentaries were the main text book in a schoolroom.  Some commentaries broke down historical events and applied them to the modern day, others focused on questions in the text whether grammatical or based on rhetoric.[5]

"Denis Lambin, who had published a commentary on Horace in 1561, [had] a tendency to give Greek parrallels in order to explain Latin passages in his main text."[6]

Scholars aimed to teach the rising generation how to be well-rounded individuals with understanding of international language (i.e. Latin), scholarly language (i.e. Greek), politics and rhetoric.  Commentaries combined all of these skills into one book.