Author: Secundus, Joannes
Biography:
SECUNDUS, Joannes (1511-36: NBG)
A Dutch neo-Latin poet, he was born in the Hague on 10 Nov. 1511. His name at birth was Jan Everaerts; his father Nicolaes Everaerts was an eminent jurist and a friend of Erasmus. Two of his brothers also became known for their Latin verses. “Jan” becomes Joannes or Johannes in Latin; it is not known how he acquired the surname Secundus. He took a degree in law at Bourges in France in 1533 and went to Spain to act as secretary to the Archbishop of Toledo. The Spanish Emperor Charles V took him in his entourage to the siege of Tunis in Africa in 1534; there it appears he contracted the illness that caused him to leave the Spanish court and return home, and that then cut short his life. Although he was able to serve for a time as secretary to the Bishop of Utrecht and accepted a call to be the private Latin secretary of Charles V, he died on his way to join the Emperor in Italy, at St. Amand, just outside Tournai, France, on 8 Oct. (some sources give 25 Sept.) 1536. The Liber Basiorum (Book of Kisses), first published in a complete edition posthumously in 1541, proved the most successful of his many Latin verses—odes, epistles, epithalamia, epigrams, etc.—and was translated into other European languages long before its first English version by Thomas Tooly in 1719. Tooly paired Secundus naturally with Catullus. Later separate translations in the eighteenth century were by George Ogle (1731) and John Nott (q.v., 1775). (NBG 43, col. 673; Encyclopaedia Britannica [1911] 24: 573) HJ
Other Names:
- Joannes Secundus Nicolaius
- Johannes Secundus