Syntagma Grammaticum

Introduction – Thomas Granger’s Syntagma Grammaticum

Ilaria Pernici

1. Thomas Granger: Life and Works

Little is known of Thomas Granger’s life and career, equally divided between school and church. He was the second of the three surviving sons of Alice and Henry Granger, a farmer, and he was baptized in 1578 at Eptworth, Lincolnshire. At that time there was not a grammar school there, thus he probably attended the nearest Lincoln Grammar School. He matriculated in 1598 as a sizar at Peterhouse, the oldest of the Cambridge Colleges, where he probably came in touch with the Puritan and Ramist theories that would later influence both his religious and secular writings. While he was preparing to get his Bachelor of Arts in 1602 and Master of Arts in 1605, he served as tutor to the children of Leventhorpe family in the Herfortshire, likely in return for Sir John’s patronage. In the two-year period 1606-07 Granger was ordered deacon, vicar, and priest in Butterwick, Lincolnshire, where he also worked as a school teacher, whereas in the following year he married Elizabeth Johnson: they had seven children together. In 1627 he died and was buried at Horbling, Lincolnshire.

Besides being a churchman, Thomas Granger was a complex and cultured personality asis finely illustrated in the books that he wrote: six religious works published in 1616 (The Application of Scripture, or the Manner how to Use the Word to Most Edifying; The Blind-Man’s Sermon, or Confutating the Blind Pharises; The Bread of Life, or Food of the Regenerate; The Light of the World; Paul’s Crown of Rejoicing, or the Manner How to Hear the Word with Profit; The Tree of Good and Evil), a Latin grammar in 1616 (Syntagma Grammaticum), a book on Logic in 1620 (Syntagma logicum), another sermon in 1620 (A Looking-Glasse for Christians), and a commentary on Ecclesiastes in 1621. The contents of all these writings show his love for both the scholarly and the ecclesiastical worlds, mutually affected by the Puritan activities connected to the church environment that he attended, and by the spread of Ramism in the academic field. His Syntagma logicum. Or, The divine logic Serving especially for the use of divines in the practice of preaching, and for the further help of judicious hearers, and generally for all. By Thomas Granger preacher of God’s Word seems to be among the first English attempts to collect and codify the Ramist logic principles mixed with religious precepts, in order to write a logic book addressed to priests and churchmen. Here, as in the religious works, Granger wants to give readers some suitable learning skills through simplified language and ideas, so as to enhance both Christian and secular knowledge. The simplification of language is the basic thought at the heart of the investigation in his Syntagma Grammaticum as well, a particularly important grammar book essential to understand a peculiar theme typical of the seventeenth-century linguistic debate, that is, the debate about the degree of purity of languages, Latin included.

2. The Grammar Context and the Ramist Approach

In the first decades of the seventeenth century, when Thomas Granger published his Syntagma Grammaticum (1616), the standardization of languages and its pedagogical strategies were reaching a good level thanks to the efforts of scholars, professor, translators, who had been working to obtain refined grammars and a refined vernacular. One of the most significant years in this sense is 1542, when King Henry VIII proclaimed as the first authorized Latin grammar the book we commonly call “Lily’s Grammar”, written both in English and in Latin, to be printed, sold, and studied in the whole reign, thus showing the intention of standardizing studies, teaching methods, and the ways of speaking and especially writing a lingua franca, which would have also helped reach the unity of the English people and nation. As a consequence, the first English grammars in English began to be compiled, printed, and used as textbooks in the schools all over the reign with a striking spread and distribution. Nonetheless, at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Latin was still considered an art, essential for every kind of communication and duty, absolutely necessary to be studied at school and, as such, it was the subject of numerous theoretical writings and grammars. Paul Greaves’s Grammatica anglicana, praecipue quatenus a latina differt, ad unicam P. Rami methodum concinnata. In qua perspicue docetur quicquid ad huius linguae cognitionem requiritur, printed in London in 1594 and written in Latin, seems to be the second and last grammar of English of the century, after William Bullokar’s pioneering Brief Grammar for English, published in 1586. As it can be inferred from the title, Greaves’ work starts precisely from Latin, in order to detect differences with the English vernacular and accordingly improve it; furthermore, Greaves’s English grammar overtly follows the teachings and methods of Pierre de La Rameé or Peter Ramus (1515ca-1572), French humanist, philosopher, logician, grammarian and academic pedagogue. Ramus was interested in re-organizing the educational canon as it was established in the Middle Ages, and to do so, his works opposed the Aristotelian tradition and scholasticism, regarded as disordered and confused. His core belief was that the seven liberal arts should be thought of in a simpler, briefer way in schools to improve didactic and dialectic; the teaching methods and the reasonings behind them should accordingly be enhanced and made more effective for students. Among Ramus’ several writings, it is worth mentioning Aristotelicae Animadversiones (1543), Dialectique (1555), and especially his three grammars: Grammatica Graeca (1560), Grammaire Française (1562), and Grammatica latina (1548), the latter being the first foreign grammar books introduced in English schools. In 1585 two anonymous translations of this important work appeared in England: The Latin Grammar of P. Ramus: translated into English. At London, Printed by Robert Waldegrave: 1585, and The Latin Grammar of P. Ramus. Translated into English. Imprinted by Thomas Thomas, Printer to the University of Cambridge. 1585. Ramist theories were especially supported at Cambridge and St. Andrews, and used by many school reformers to build their theories, as Paul Greaves and Thomas Granger himself.

3. Thomas Granger’s Syntagma Grammaticum

Published in 1616, Thomas Granger’s Syntagma Grammaticum, or an easy and methodical explanation of Lily’s Grammar, whereby the mystery of this art is more plainly set forth both for the better help of all schoolmasters in the true order of teaching, and the scholars far more easy attainment of the Latin tongue is an important contribution to Early Modern grammar matters and pedagogy. In this work Granger tries to apply the Ramist and Puritan theories he learned at Peterhouse College in Cambridge to a Latin grammar, precisely to Lily’s textbook. As it can be inferred from the title, his Latin grammar aims to simplify and supply with a method the authorized grammar, in order to provide an easier teaching method for schoolmasters and an easier learning method for scholars. Nonetheless, the book did not probably enjoy great success: it was never reprinted until the Scolar Press Facsimile in 1971.

In the title page of the book, finely decorated with books, putti, and allegorical figures inside geometrical frames, after the proper title, we read a common Latin motto: “Scientiarum ianitrix grammatica” (“grammar is the guardian of sciences”). We can also read that the book has been printed in London by Thomas Dawson: he was not among the most famous printers, but his name was strictly connected with scientific and religious printings, especially Calvinist writings. Each of Granger’s six books printed in 1616 is dedicated to a member of the Leventhorpe family to show respect and gratitude, and Syntagma Grammaticum, which is the longest and probably most learned among these works, is notably dedicated to his patron Sir John, head of the household, with a letter written in Latin demonstrating love, affection, and dedication to the cause.

The long and complex epistle to the reader, “containing the general theoric or true grounds of teaching”, is probably the most significant part of the book, as here Granger gives voice to his sharp and clear-cut opinions and attempts to provide solutions to the problems he detected in the previous grammar textbooks, like Lily’s, besides providing an investigation on the natural or unnatural behaviours pertaining both to teachers and scholars. The text immediately opens with negative words: “There be two main errors, gentle reader, both in teaching and learning, and not so great as common: doubtfulness and confusion […] sometime in the master, and always in the scholar”, that is, a defective knowledge and a disordered teaching are the two main obstacles for a well-functioning scholastic system and thus for a correct transmission of knowledge. Both figures, pupil and schoolmaster, are deeply analyzed in their lacks and faults, but both are described as capable of improvement thanks to the help of a correct guidance and thanks to simplicity. One of the most common faults causing doubtfulness and confusion in the pupils is imagination: “children are fantastical and full of imaginations, their understandings weak, their apprehensions confused and reason unperfect”. Nonetheless, they can and must be helped by the schoolmaster, who can expound “lesson to them in plain words, and in such style and manner as is familiar to them, illustrating the meaning by such vulgar examples and comparisons as are known to them, or may be easily apprehended of them”. This dependence on observation and disapproval of imagination comes directly from Puritan and Ramist thoughts encouraging a pragmatic educational process made of lots of punishments and some recreations. Toys at school, for example, are forbidden, “for if such things be present, they will have them always in their hands or in their minds so that, by means of such cowling imaginations, nothing that they do, much less than is told them, can make any fast impression in them, but brokenly and confusedly floateth in their heads”. The use of fables is recommended for younger pupils, but the schoolmaster, “considering children’s dispositions must use revokements and preventions above all things most carefully”. Parents too are not exempt from Granger’s criticism, as they “most commonly come in like lords of misrule disturbing and confounding both master and scholar”. Furthermore, when students arrive at school they have already been corrupted and damaged, both by parents and by nature, another theme especially dear to Puritans and Ramists. The schoolmaster is, again, duty bound to ‘fix’ pupils of any age, but children are especially easy to help because of their malleable behaviours; but the teacher must be able to adjust nature in a multitude of students in order to build uniformity, fundamental to obtain the much-needed order and simplicity. Although Granger is highly critical towards previous grammars, which he deems unable to provide students with a knowledge suitable for later studies at University, what appears to be evident since the very first lines is that simplicity and Ramist logic are not really employed by Granger himself, who writes this letter with long and complicated periods, a complex syntax, and very elaborate philosophical considerations, often carried out through syllogisms and logic implications. However, the process of teaching proposed by Granger in the grammar book is meant to follow in any case very specific criteria, connected one to other through a chain of organized, logic, simple notions, and examples.

The proper grammatical part opens with a bipartition: “Grammar is the art to speak well. It hath two parts: etymology and syntaxis”, thus simplifying Lily’s division of grammar into eight parts of speech. Despite being generally much longer than Lily’s, thus neglecting Ramist principles, the first part devoted to etymology is very simple and clear in its explanations; in particular, it is full of examples, both sentences and especially lists of words to illustrate and clarify certain sections, like terminations, verbs, genders. Six pages are devoted to heteroclite nouns and three to heteroclite verbs; fifteen pages concern the formation of verbs; and eleven pages are dedicated to prepositions and adverbs, just to give some examples. It is also possible to find a huge number of tables, thus taking advantage of this pedagogical device largely employed also in “Lily’s Grammar”.

The second part, devoted to syntax, opens with an interesting, peculiar, and repeated reference to “Allaeosis”, definitely distinguishing this grammar from its point of departure, Lily. Allaeosis is both a figure of speech and a theological concept that had been especially used by the Swiss theologian Huldrych Zwingli to refer to something which is ascribed to the divine nature of Christ, which is in turn a connected to the human nature, and vice versa. In this use of allaeosis, Granger clearly seeks to include a religious background into the secular setting of grammar, thus confirming what he had been expressing in the long letter to the reader. Nevertheless, Granger’s work is similar to Lily’s grammar in that it is full of classical examples, confirming the didactic usefulness of this pedagogical strategy: it is possible to find quotations from Virgil (Aeneidos; Eclogae); Terence (Eunuchus; Andria; Heauton Timorumenos); Columella (De re rustica); Tacitus (Historiae); Pliny (Naturalis historiae); Cicero (Orationes in Catilinam; Philippicae; Epistulae ad Quintum; Epistulae ad Atticum; Epistulae ad familiares); Juvenal (Saturae); Livy (Ab urbe condita); Caesar (De bello gallico); Ovid (Metamorphoses); Gellius (Noctes Atticae); Persius (Saturae), and many other authors and works. The last parts of the grammar, entitled “Of Construing” and “Resolution and Construction”, are particularly worth mentioning: here, in fifteen pages, Granger copies some sentences from classical works by authors like Ovid, Cicero, Terence, in order to provide an explanation of some specific grammar issues by means of a meticulous analysis and explanation of all the elements of the sentence. In the “Examples in Mixt Periods” section in particular, Granger includes the analysis of longer excerpt from contemporary Latin writings like De furoribus Norfolciensium Ketto Duce, Liber unus. Eiusdem Noruicus[1] by Alexander Neville (1575) or The Queenes Maiesties Letters to the great Sophy of Persia, sent by M. Anthonie Ienkinson[2] (1561) where Granger changes the name of Anthony Jenkinson, English merchant and famous navigator, into that of Alexander. In these examples, after the Latin transcription, Granger splits the sentence in its different parts, now organized following an easier syntax, in order to provide an explanation of all its components: what the principal sentence is, what the clauses are and why they are employed, the use of parentheses, causal, relative, copulative particles, and so on. This part was probably intended by Granger to be used at school as a repeatable exercise to learn (and teach) grammatical and logical analysis, and to foster learning and education.

The work concludes with a two pages Latin letter to the “ignotum lector”, the unknown reader.

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[1] Alexandri Nevylli Angli, De furoribus Norfolciensium Ketto Duce, Liber unus. Eiusdem Noruicus. Londini. Ex Officina Henrici Binnemani Typographi. Anno salutis humanae. 1575. [B. ij]

[2] The Queenes Maiesties Letters to the great Sophy of Persia, sent by M. Anthonie Ienkinson. 1561. In: The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation edited by Richard Hakluyt and Edmund Goldsmid. Volume III

This edition of Thomas Granger’s Syntagma Grammaticum is divided in two different versions of the text: the semi-diplomatic edition and the modernized text. For the semi-diplomatic version, we used as copy-texts both the EEBO edition of the printed text available at the University of Glasgow Library and the edition held at the British Library, stored with the shelf-mark 827.a:2. In addition, the 1971 Scolar Press Limited (Menston, England) edition, a facsimile of the copy held at St. Mary’s Church, Marlborough, has been used. The gothic characters, used for English, are transcribed with Roman, while italics and Roman, used for Latin, are preserved. Pages are numbered following the letters and numbers of the copy-text, in braces or with the acronym {n. p.}, standing for “not paginated”.

Some letters are missing at page {D. 3} in all the three editions, thus leaving some words of the table incomplete.

There is not to date any critical edition of this work.

For the references to classical quotations contained in the text the following online databases have been used: The Latin Library (http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/), Perseus Digital Library (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/), Loeb Classical Library (https://www.loebclassics.com/).