Florentius Volusenus - Work

Work

Volusenus's linguistic studies embraced Hebrew as well as Greek and Latin. His reputation, however, rests on the beautiful dialogue, De Animi Tranquillitate, first printed by S. Gryphius at Lyon in 1543. From internal evidence it appears to have been composed about that time, but the subject had exercised the writer for many years. The dialogue shows us Christian humanism at its best. Volusenus is a great admirer of Erasmus, but he criticises the purity of his Latin and also his philosophy.

His own philosophy is Christian and Biblical rather than classical or scholastic. He takes a fresh and independent view of Christian ethics, and he ultimately reaches a doctrine as to the witness of the Spirit and the assurance of grace which breaks with the traditional Christianity of his time and is based on ethical motives akin to those of the German Reformers. The verses which occur in the dialogue, and the poem which concludes it, give Volusenus a place among Scottish Latin poets, but it is as a Christian philosopher that he attains distinction.

The dialogue was reissued at Leiden in 1637 by the Scots writer David Echlin, whose poems, with a selection of three poems from the dialogue of Volusenus, appear, with others, in the famous Amsterdam collection Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum hujus and printed by Johannes Blaeu in 2 vols. in 1637. Later editions of the dialogue appeared at Edinburgh in 1707 and 1751 (the latter edited by G. Wishart). All the reissues contain a short life of the author by Thomas Wilson, advocate, son-in-law and biographer of Archbishop Patrick Adamson. Supplementary facts are found in the letters and state papers of the period, and in Sadolet's Letters.