Funeral Oration of Pieter Burman on the Death of the Most Distinguished Man Johann Georg Graevius

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Original title: Petri Burmanni Oratio funebris in obitum viri clarissimi Joannis Georgii Graevii An academic Latin funeral oration commemorating the classical scholar Johann Georg Graevius, who died at Utrecht on 11 January 1703. The title page dates it XI Kal. Martias 1703. It was printed at Utrecht (Trajecti ad Rhenum) by Willem van de Water (Guilielmus vande Water), printer to the academy. The volume also contains an elegy by Burman and the Amicorum carmina, a collection of memorial poems by friends. The oration presents Graevius's death as the burial of Learning and Letters themselves. It then narrates his life: his family's confessional exile, his severe schooling at Schulpforta, his studies at Leipzig, Deventer and Amsterdam, and his correction in Latin style by Gronovius, set against the Lipsian imitators. It also covers his move from Lutheranism to the Reformed Church and his chairs of eloquence and of history and politics. Further sections praise his manuscript collation, his learned correspondence, his urbanity, his view of the academy as a well-stocked shop, and the free civic life. The oration ends with an account of his death and a peroration petitioning Utrecht's magistrates to support his orphaned daughters. The memorial verses lament the lack of a monument, call Utrecht a new Rome, and hail Burman as another Graevius. 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.

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