Poetica lui Quintus Horatius Flaccus în școala helvetică din Cluj
The Poetry of Quintus Horatius Flaccus in the Helvetic School of Cluj

Summary/Abstract: Only a handful of Horace’s poetic works were found in the Reformed Library of Cluj during the 16th-18th centuries, and based on the ownership inscriptions, we can conclude that they came into the possession of the collegiate library during the 18th century, more specifically in the second half of that century. The dichotomy of our analysis lies in the fact that, on the one hand, although both Alstedt and Apáczai Csere János prescribe the study of Horatian poetry in their encyclopedias, these works or anthologies did not appear in the curriculum of the Helvetic school in Cluj during the 17th century. On the other hand, although Horace became a standard author in schools immediately after his death, and the reading of his works continued into the 16th century, especially following the critical works written under the influence of the Italian Renaissance. However, the absence or negligible presence of instruction in Horatian epistles is limited to the Reformed educational systems in Cluj and Târgu-Mureș during the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century. This lack of books and textbooks on Horace’s poetics is not found in the Lutheran schools of present-day Slovakia during the aforementioned period, where, due to Ramian influence, Horatian works are read and studied continuously. Compared to the curricula of the Reformed schools in Cluj or Târgu-Mureș, where Terentius and Vergilius are read and studied extensively over a large number of class hours, and the required reading list also includes Isocrates, Cicero, and Cornelius Nepos, we can conclude that the absence or negligible presence of Horatian works in the Transylvanian Reformed college library is primarily due to the fact that Horace’s highly diverse works were not Christianized, as happened with the fables of Terentius or Vergilius, or as Nepos’s parallel biographies were interpreted in Christological terms; Horatian epodes, odes, or epistles could not be received according to a single canonizing model of textual, poetic, and grammatical interpretation. Their internal form, rooted in philosophy and the seeds of early natural philosophy from antiquity, along with the varied meter of the verses, required the mastery of pure Latin, based on archaic Latin literary texts (especially Plautus and Terence) and on Greek texts, particularly Homeric, Alcaic, and Sapphic works. Lutheran schools, which operated uniformly according to the same rules, ensured that students mastered pure Latin without rewriting ancient works into a Christianized framework. Understanding the scholiarchic texts of the late ancient period, as well as Greek philosophical and literary works, requires a revision of the curriculum, similar to the Catholic Jesuit curriculum that I have highlighted in this paper. A uniform approach, based on the parallel reading of works on poetics and rhetoric from antiquity alongside those from the 16th–17th centuries, ensures easier understanding and learning of the applicability of ancient literary terms and ideas in the context of understanding theological, literary, and philosophical texts from the 17th–18th centuries. Thus, in 1769, by decision of the Literary Commission (Litteraria Commissio) of the Helvetic Supreme Consistory in Transylvania, education was reorganized and efforts were made to standardize it across all Helvetic schools in Transylvania.

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