Here on the Hohe Straße in Greetsiel stood the house where Ubbo Emmius was born on 5 December 1547. He was the son of Lutheran pastor Emme Dyken — Emmius means ‘son of Emme’ in Latin — and Elke Tjarda, whose father was the mayor of Norden. We mainly know Ubbo Emmius as the first chancellor (rector magnificus) of the University of Groningen, where he was also the first professor of Greek and of history, but he had already come a long way before he arrived in Groningen. He attended several Latin schools in Germany and studied in Rostock and Geneva.
While Ubbo was a student in Rostock, he bought this booklet in 1572: M.T. Cic. Epistolae ad Atticum, Brutum, & Q. fratrem (i.e. Letters from Marcus Tullius Cicero to Atticus, Brutus, and his brother Quintus). We know this, because Ubbo wrote in the front of the book, in his own hand (in Latin): ‘Ubbo Emmius from Frisia bought me in Rostock in 1572.’ Ubbo went to Rostock to study theology, because his Lutheran father thought this would protect him from non-Lutheran influences. Unfortunately for his father, things turned out differently and Ubbo converted to Calvinism.
The booklet that Ubbo bought in Rostock contains Latin letters from the famous Roman lawyer, politician, and philosopher Cicero to his best friend Titus Pomponius Atticus, to senator Marcus Junius Brutus, and to Cicero’s brother Quintus. As a humanist Ubbo was inspired by Cicero who, like Ubbo, highly valued education and culture. This booklet in the University of Groningen Library is special and unique, as it contains many of Ubbo Emmius’s personal notes: three classical quotations and a drawing with a poem on the endpaper at the front of the book, and several comments in the margins next to the printed text by Cicero. All of them are written in Ubbo’s tiny, almost illegible handwriting.
Desert Father, Jealousy, and Livy
Below the inscription on the endpaper in which he indicates when he bought the book, Emmius added three classical quotations that apparently inspired him. The first one is a piece of advice from Evagrius Ponticus. Evagrius was one of the Desert Fathers, hermits who retreated to the Middle-Eastern deserts in the third century. They are sometimes considered to be the first Christian monks. One of them was Evagrius, who, unlike other Desert Fathers, was known for his literacy. He wrote down his pieces of wisdom and as a result, they have had a lasting influence on Christendom all over the world. It was probably Evagrius’s moral-philosophical background that drew Emmius to him. Emmius wrote the following quotation from Evagrius in the booklet (in Greek): ‘Say what is needed, and when it is needed, and about which it is needed, and do not listen to what is not needed.’ Wise words that are relevant to this day: they would improve the quality of many social media.
Below Evagrius’s quotation, Emmius quotes an epigram from the Greek Anthology, a large collection of poems from ancient Greece: ‘Jealousy is a terrible evil, but it does have beauty as well: it eats away the eyes and hearts of jealous people.’ As a humanist, Emmius was primarily interested in language and behaviour, the two fundamental themes on which the education of people should be focused from childhood onwards. According to the humanists, this is how you create real human beings, in other words, cultured people.
Ubbo’s third quotation is from the History of Rome by the Roman historian Livy, who lived around the beginning of our Common Era. As a humanist and historian, Emmius was by definition interested in Livy’s work. The Latin quotation he wrote in the booklet is another general, moral statement about human nature and human behaviour of the type that humanists such as Ubbo Emmius were fond of: “People are more prone to find something bad than something good.”
Mortality
Before we come to the printed text of Cicero’s letters and Ubbo’s notes in the margins, we take a closer look at a drawing Ubbo made and the poem he wrote underneath. The drawing is of a winged man on an hour glass with a scythe in his hands. This is a well-known symbol for Time. The wings represent time flying by, while the scythe symbolizes the end of time (death) and the mortality of life. The hour glass obviously also represents the passing of time, which is underlined by the accompanying poem in Latin:
TIME PASSES
What is human life but a fleeting shadow
disappearing in a wink like a wave of water?
While we toil in the grip of vain fervour,
time passes and death approaches with great strides.
This poem shows how Ubbo Emmius thought about time and life: life is as short and fleeting as a wave at sea. Of course, Ubbo’s life was fleeting too. He died on 9 December 1625 in Groningen.
Second Owner
Below Emmius’s quotation, there is another clue about ownership, an ex libris with the text: J. Baart de la Faille, Med. Prof. Groningen. Physician and professor Jacob Baart de la Faille junior lived from 1795 to 1867. From 1826 onwards, he was at the centre of the medical world in the city of Groningen and he contributed to numerous societal activities. The University of Groningen Library acquired this booklet with inscriptions and notes from Ubbo Emmius at an auction of Jacob Baart de la Faille’s extensive book collection.
Author: Frida van Til
